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THE

CAMBRIDGE
ANCIENT HISTORY

THE

FIFTH

CENTURY B.C.

THE CAMBRIDGE
ANCIENT HISTORY

SECOND EDITION
VOLUME V

The Fifth Century b.c.

Edited by

D. M. LEWIS f.b.a.

Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford

JOHN BOARDMAN f.b.a.

Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art in the University of Oxford

J. K. DAVIES f.b.a.

R athbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology in the University of Liverpool

M. OSTWALD

William R. Kenan, Jr, Professor of Classics, Swarthmore College
and Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Cambridge

UNIVERSITY PRESS

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PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any pan may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1992
Fifth printing 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Card no. 75-85719

isbn o 521 23347 x (hardback)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTENTS

List of maps page ix

List of text-figures x

Preface xiii

1 Sources, chronology, method i

by d. m. lewis, Professor of Ancient History in the University of

Oxford

2 Greece after the Persian Wars 1 5

by ]. k. Davies, Rath bone Professor of Ancient History and Classical
Archaeology in the University of Liverpool

3 The Delian League to 449 b.c. 34

by p. j. Rhodes, Professor of Ancient History in the University of
Durham

I The foundation of the League 54

11 The early history of the League 40

hi The ambitions of the Athenian democrats 49

iv The mid-century crisis 54

4 The Athenian revolution 62

by P. J. RHODES

i Athens after the Persian Wars 62

II The reform of the Areopagus 67

hi Periclean democracy 77

iv The impact of Athenian democracy 87

5 Mainland Greece, 479-45 1 b . c . 96

by D. M. LEWIS

i From 479 to 461 96

11 The ‘First Peloponnesian War’ 1 1 1

6 The Thirty Years’ Peace 121

by D. M. LEWIS

i The Peace of Callias 1 2 1

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CONTENTS

ii The empire established 127

in 446 b.c. 1 53

iv After the Peace 138

7 Sicily, 478— 43 1 b.c. 147

by d. asheri. Professor of Ancient History, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem

I Sicily in the age of Hiero 149

II The fall of the .tyrannies 1 54

hi The Sicel movement 161

iv Democracy and culture at Syracuse and Acragas 165

8 Greek culture, religion and society in the fifth century b.c.

8 a Art: Archaic to Classical 171

by j. J. pollitt. Professor of Classical Archaeology and History of
Art, Yale University

I Style and iconology 17 1

II Artists and patrons 180

8 b Classical cities and sanctuaries 184

by the late r. e. Wycherley, formerly Professor of Greek, University
College of North Wales, Bangor

8r Rebuilding in Athens and Attica 206

by the late r. e. Wycherley

8 d Panhellenic cults and panhellenic poets 223

by n. j. Richardson, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford

1 The panhellenic festivals in the fifth century b.c. 223

11 The religious character of the games 226

in The order and development of the festivals 229

iv The athletes: background and careers 232

v Poets and patrons 237

vi The poems 239

vii Aftermath 243

8e Athenian cults and festivals 245

by Walter burkert, Professor of Classical Philology, University of
Zurich

1 Continuity and change 245

11 Note on the sources 248

in The cycle of the year 249

iv Polis religion: cults defining identity 256

v Divination 262

vi The Mysteries 264

vn Private piety 265

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CONTENTS Vll

8 f Athenian religion and literature 268

by b. m. w. knox, formerly Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies,
Washington

1 Introduction 268

11 Tragedy 272

in Comedy 282

8^ Society and economy 287

by J. K. DAVIES

8/> Athens as a cultural centre 306

by M. OSTwald, William R. Kenan, Jr, Professor of Classics,

Swarthmore College, and Professor of Classical Studies, University of
Pennsylvania

1 The economic and social background 306

11 Religion and empire 3 1 2

hi The visual arts 314

iv Literature 323

v Philosophy, rhetoric and science 338

vi The impact on Athens 35 1

9 The Archidamian War 370

by D. M. lewis

1 The causes of the war 570

11 War 380

10 The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition 433

by the late A . andrewes , formerly Wykeham Professor of Ancient
History in the University of Oxford

1 The failure of the Peace 433

n Mantinea and the aftermath 437

hi Athenian policy and politics 440

iv Melos 444

v Sicily: the first phase 446

vi Sicily: Gylippus and the turn of the tide 453

vii Sicily: the final disaster 460

1 1 The Spartan resurgence 464

by the late a. andrewes

1 War in Ionia and Persian intervention 464

11 The beginnings of the Athenian revolution 471

hi The Four Hundred 474

iv The Five Thousand replace the Four Hundred 479

v The Hellespont campaigns and the return of Alcibiades 481

vi Lysander and the collapse of Athens 489

vii Epilogue 496

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Vlll

CONTENTS

Chronological notes 499

Chronological table 506

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations page 5 1 4

A General 5 1 8

B Chronology 522

C Sources 523

I Historiography 523

II Inscriptions 527

in Coinage 530

D Athens: internal affairs 5 3 1

E The Athenian empire 5 3 5

F The Greek states 539

G The Peloponnesian War 541

H Sicily 543

1 General 543

11 Hiero and Theron 544

hi Fall of tyrannies, constitutional history 544

iv Sicel movement 545

v Syracuse and Tyrrhenian affairs 546

vi Coinage 546

I Art and architecture 547

J Literature and philosophy 554

K Religion and festivals 5 5 7

L Society and economy 561

Index 5 67

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MAPS

1 Greece and Western Asia Minor page 2—3

2 Central Greece and the Peloponnese 98

3 Sicily 148

4 Western Asia Minor and the Hellespont 466

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TEXT-FIGURES

1 Fragment of an Athenian decree ( IG i 3 68 = M-L 68) concerning

tribute, with a relief showing tribute bags and vessels page 5 5

2 Silver coin of the Arcadian League 106

3 Layout of Athenian tribute-list stela I 124

4 Silver coins of Sybaris and Thurii 142

5 Silver coin of Amisus, renamed Piraeus 146

6 Bronze helmet of Etruscan type dedicated by Hiero at Olympia 1 52

7 Silver coins of Himera and Aitna 1 56

8 Silver litra of Camarina 158

9 Silver tetradrachms of Messana, Zancle and Selinus 160

10 Silver decadrachms of Syracuse 168

11 Silver tetradrachm of Acragas 169

t2 Plan of the fifth-century sanctuary of Aphaea on Aegina 188

13 Temple of Zeus at Olympia 189

14 Temple of Zeus Olympius at Acragas 190

15 Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae 192

16 Corinthian capital from the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae,

restored 193

17 Plan of the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, fifth century b.c. 194

18 Plan of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, early fifth century b.c^. 194

19 Athens, the theatre of Dionysus and Odeum, late fifth century b.c. 197

20 Houses at Olynthus, fourth century b.c. 199

21 Reconstructions of the Attic farmhouses beside the Dema wall (a),

and at Vari ( b ), by J. E. Jones 201

22 Houses west of the Areopagus at Athens 202

23 Plan of Classical Rhodes 204

24 Athens in the late fifth century b.c. 207

25 Athens, Piraeus and the Long Walls 208

26 Sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule, Athens 210

27 Plan of the Athenian Agora at the end of the fifth century b.c. 212

28 The ‘Prison of Socrates’, south west of the Agora, Athens,

reconstruction by J. E. Jones 214

29 Restoration of the fafade of the Stoa of Zeus, Athens 21 5

30 Plan of the Acropolis, Athens 216

31 The temple by the Ilissus at Athens 219

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TEXT-FIGURES xi

32 Festival at a pillar image of Dionysus from an Attic red-figure

stamnos by the Dinos Painter, about 420 B.C. 253

33 Attic red-figure chous, late fifth century b.c. 254

34 Kratenskos from Brauron 257

3 5 Lead puppet in a box, from the Ceramicus cemetery, Athens 267

36 Satyr player from an Attic red-figure cup by Makron, about 490

b . c . 271

37 Clay figure of a comic actor 283

38 Plan of Pylos— Sphacteria 415

39 Bronze shield captured from the Spartans by the Athenians at

Pylos and dedicated in the Stoa Poikile at Athens 419

40 Plan of Syracuse 454

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PREFACE

This volume is unlike any which has preceded it. Earlier volumes have
covered the whole of the Mediterranean and Near East. We hardly stray
beyond Greece, deferring developments elsewhere to Volume vi. We are
thus stressing that this is a period when, for the first and last time before
the Romans, great political and military power on the one hand and
cultural importance on the other, including the presence of historians to
describe that power, are located in the same place. By contrast, Persia and
the empires which preceded it were powerful but not articulate; the Jews
were articulate but not powerful. This gives the volume a coherence
which its predecessors and immediate successors lack.

Some of the coherence arises from the nature of our sources, which
make an Athenian standpoint hard to avoid. That point was noticed by
Sallust in the first century b.c.:

As I reckon it, the actions of the Athenians were indeed vast and magnificent,
but rather less substantial than report makes them. But because writers of genius
grew up there, Athenian deeds are renowned as the greatest throughout the
world. The talent of those who did them is judged by the powers of praise of
these outstanding literary geniuses. (Bell. Cat. 8.2-4)

In this volume we shift Sallust’s emphasis, and regard the efflores-
cence of literature (and art) as itself a major historical phenomenon to be
examined and explained. Much of the cultural achievement survives, for
us to assess by our own criteria. Fluctuations in the reputation of
individuals and of styles will continue, but they are not likely to diminish
the position of the fifth century, particularly at Athens, as the first Classic
age of European civilization, important not only for its own achieve-
ments, but for the power of those achievements to influence later
generations and take new forms in their hands. Even if the events of the
period had no intrinsic interest, they would still be precious for our
understanding of the cultural heritage.

The events themselves certainly do have great intrinsic interest. The
transformation of the Delian League, created to continue the Greek fight
against Persia, into an empire run in the interests of Athens, is a textbook

xiii

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XIV

PREFACE

case in the history of imperialism. The development of Athenian
democracy, the beginnings of which we saw in the last volume, into an
experiment in direct government by a largish citizen body, produced
political concepts and political thinking which have remained of
permanent importance. That the volume ends with the collapse of both
the empire and the democracy raises perennial questions about the
reconciliation of political justice and political efficiency. These themes
are visible in many of our sources, but were most notably transmitted
and interpreted by Thucydides, one of the most gifted historians of any
age: it should be added that perhaps his most remarkable achievement
was to transmute even military narrative into a commentary on the
human condition.

On the international plane, events were shaped by the break, at first
gradual, which split the victorious Greek allies of 480—79. There were
always those, at both Athens and Sparta, whose ideal was continued
collaboration; but events were too strong for them, and our concept of
the century is shaped by the polarity between the Spartan alliance, land-
based, with a fairly narrow and specialized governing group at its centre,
and the Athenian empire, largely maritime and with a democracy at its
centre. Various later generations have found contemporary resonances
which have encouraged them to perpetuate the concept of this polarity.
The different nature of the power-bases certainly did much to shape the
course of the eventual struggle of the Peloponnesian War.

Some of the factors which made the cultural achievement possible are
clear. First, success in the Persian Wars was itself a heroic achievement,
which provided new epic themes and the impulse to celebrate them.
Secondly, as Athens became more important politically, it became more
likely to attract individuals who might find it a more stimulating
environment than their own cities. This was a cumulative process and
must have developed existing talent. Thirdly, the economic gains of
empire (not simply the tribute paid by the allies, important though that
was) made projects possible for the Athenians which had hitherto been
peculiar to kings and tyrants. Why the Athenian citizen-body itself
commanded a gene-pool of such potentiality is beyond us.

Though Athens dominates our sources for this volume, it is neverthe-
less called ‘The Fifth Century’ instead of the ‘Athens’ of the first edition.
But we have tried not to draw too sharp a line between Archaic and
Classical Greece; and there is a sense in which the last decade of our
period, with a weakened Athens and a renascent Persia, looks forward to
the shape of the fourth century. The more general title reflects the fact
that the story of the fifth century is not just an Athenian story. Even at
the cultural level, the temple of Zeus at Olympia had emerged, some
years earlier than the Parthenon, from a separate and different set of

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PREFACE

social and political circumstances. The great sanctuaries continued to
follow their own individual lines of development, and their festivals
created forms of literature not found at Athens. Developments in the
many minor Greek states were influenced by emulation of their larger
neighbours. Models of comfort and society elsewhere stimulated urban
development in more backward areas. Smaller communities saw the
advantages of combining into bigger ones, for example, Olynthus in 43 2
and Rhodes in 408. Exiles and migrants from long-established states
took their ideas of the good life to foundations like Thurii and
Amphipolis or areas like Macedon where urbanism did not exist.

This presupposed the polis as the Greek way of life. There were other
forms of political development, but they are harder to trace during our
period. Gelon’s creation of an extended Syracuse collapsed. Successive
kings of Macedon struggled to preserve and centralize their kingdom;
they too used urbanization as one of their principal tools. The Athenians,
who had exploited ties of racial relationship with their allies when they
created the Delian League, nevertheless did not use them to break down
citizenship barriers between one polis and another. Athenian citizenship
became more, not less, restricted during our period. Pericles boasted of
the advantages of equal opportunity for citizens at home, but neither he
nor the Athenian people saw merit in extending it further. Cleon may
have been right to say that democracy could not rule an empire. This
volume closes in uncertainty as to whether the Spartan oligarchy would
be more successful.

The framework of this volume is different from that of the first
edition. We have been more explicit on questions of historical method.
We have tried to achieve closer integration of Athenian external and
internal history. Separate chapters on drama, philosophy, historiogra-
phy and art have been replaced by an attempt to show the cultural
achievements in their historical, social and religious contexts. The
bibliographies in such intensely cultivated fields can make no real
attempt at completeness and mostly represent work directly referred to
by our contributors; we have slightly amplified the form of reference to
them used in previous volumes. We continue our practice of including a
map reference after a name in the index, instead of compiling a separate
index of names for each map.

The volume has been long in preparation, and scrutiny of our
attempts to keep it up to date may well reveal unavoidable inconsisten-
cies. Of our contributors. Professor A. Andrewes, who gave sage
counsel in the planning stage and thereafter, and Professor R. E.
Wycherley have not lived to see the completed volume; these are
personal losses as well as losses to scholarship.

We are grateful to Simon Hornblower for help in the closing stages of

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xvi preface

preparation, and for the patience, skill and care with which we have been
tended by the staff of the Cambridge University Press, in particular by
Pauline Hire. Professor Rhodes wishes to thank Dr O. P. T. K.
Dickinson, and, for financial assistance, the University of Durham. Text
illustrations, when not derived from a stated source, have been prepared
by Marion Cox. Fuller illustration will appear in the Plates Volume
which is intended to accompany both Volume v and the forthcoming
Volume vi. The maps have been drawn by Euromap Ltd; the index was
compiled by Barbara Hird.

D. M. L.

j.B.
J. K. D.
M. O.

NOTE ON FOOTNOTE REFERENCES

Works cited in the various sections of the Bibliography are referred to in
footnotes by author and date, followed by the appropriate section letter, the
number assigned to the work in that section, the volume number, page
references etc. Thus Pritchett 1965 (a too) 1 5 is a reference to p. 5 of vol. 1 of
W. K. Pritchett’s Studies in Ancient Greek Topography - no. too of Bibliography A:
General.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 1

SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY, METHOD

D. M. LEWIS

As far as source material is concerned, the period covered by this volume
falls, for the writer of political history, into three sections, which present
sharply contrasting problems of method. 1 For the period from 435 to 41 1
b.c. Thucydides provides a firm framework. For the period from 478 to
43 5, he gives us some relatively full narrative on special points and a
sketchy narrative from 477 to 440; the only connected narrative of any
size is that by Diodorus Siculus. For 41 1 to 404 we have two connected
narratives, by Xenophon and Diodorus.

Thucydides, 2 son of Olorus of the deme Halimous, born perhaps
about 460, was related in some way to Cimon and to Thucydides son of
Melesias. 3 Like Cimon, he had Thracian connexions, as is indicated by
his father’s name (cf. Hdt. vi.39.3) and his own statement (iv.105.1) that
he had possessions in the gold mines east of the river Strymon which
gave him great influence with the mainlanders of that area. Of his early
life we know nothing, but can readily infer his total immersion in the
intellectual excitement which the sophists were bringing to Athens. 4 His
military career begins and ends for us with his tenure of the generalship
in 424/3 (p. 427 below). After his failure at Amphipolis he was in exile
from Athens for twenty years (v.26.5), and this gave him the opportunity
to watch events, not less from the Peloponnesian side; he says nothing of
his ability to watch Athens. His intention of writing a history of the
Peloponnesian War had in some sense been formed from its beginning in
431 (1.1.1). How long he lived after 404, we have no means of telling. 5

Our manuscripts call his book Historiai; there is no reason to think
that this, ‘Investigations’, would have been his title for what he probably
thought of as his xjrtgraphe or xjngramma, ‘Composition’. They divide it
into eight books (a division into thirteen books was also current in
antiquity). Of these, Book 1 is introductory and carries the story down to

1 For most of the topics covered in this chapter, see also Gomme, biCT Introduction.

2 On Thucydides in general see Luschnat 1971 (c 68), Dover 1975 (c 27), Hornblower 1987 (c

52). 3 Cavaignac 1929 (d i j); Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 246-7; Davies 1971 (l 27) 2$ $- 6 .

4 Finley 1942 (c 30) 36-75, and see pp. 359-62 below; cf. e.g. Macleod 1983 (a 82) 54-6, 125-31.

5 It has been argued by Pouilloux and Salviat 1983 (c 79) that he was still writing Book vm after
596; I do not accept their evidence (see also Cartledge 1984 (pm) and p. 44 n. 36).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

I. SOURCES AND THEIR USES

SOURCES AND THEIR USES

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

I. SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY, METHOD

the period immediately before the outbreak of war in 43 1 . The remaining
books are organized by war-years, each divided into a summer and a
winter. This distinguishes the work sharply from that of Herodotus,
which has no open chronological scheme, less sharply from that of other
contemporary writers (he has at least Hellanicus in mind), who arranged
by other types of year, by Athenian archons or by the year of the current
priestess of Hera at Argos (v. 19.2, cf. n.2.1). Such arrangements he
thought imprecise (v. 19.3, cf. 1.97.2); how great a degree of precision is
to be attributed to the beginning and end of his seasons is disputed.

There is general agreement that Book vm, which breaks off in mid-
sentence in late summer 41 1, represents a fairly early stage of compo-
sition; parallel narratives, sometimes hardly more than extended notes,
stand side by side without close correlation, and there are no speeches
worked up into direct speech; there is no reason to think that what we
have was written at all long after the events described. 6 Book v, from
chapter 27 to its end, also has no speeches, apart from the Melian
Dialogue (v.8 5 — 1 13; see pp. 445-6), but, apart from this, what has
appeared incompleteness may be in some part due to the nature of the
subject matter. 7 For the rest of the work arguments tend to be subjective.
There are passages, notably 11.65. 12, VL15.3— 4, which were certainly
written in or after 404, but there is no means of telling how much
continuous attention Thucydides gave to his manuscript or whether his
criteria of incompleteness would have been the same as ours. 8

The introductory chapters of Book 1, intended in form to demonstrate
the greatness of the Peloponnesian War, give by the way a history of
early Greece, and carry an ever-growing weight of observation on
historical method. There are limitations, we are told (1.21), on the
amount of truth which can be asserted about the past; 1.22 passes to the
limitations of his work on the war. Speeches were hard to remember in
detail both by him and by his informants, and there will be some
subjectivity (ous S’ av iSoxovv ep.01 eKaoronrepl tu>v aielvapovTuiv ra.
Seovra p-dAior’ elireiv, ‘as I thought the several individuals or groups would
have said what they had to say about the situation’); that point is at least
clear, whatever the nuances of the qualifications; 9 correspondingly the
speeches in the work are normally introduced and concluded with
indefinite pronouns (e.g. ol p.ev KepKvpaioi eAe£av roiaSe (1.31.4) . . .

6 For all this see Andrewes, HCT v, including pp. 4, 369-75, for arguments about the date of
writing, ignored by Pouilloux and Salviat (above, n. 5). But see Connor 1984 (c 22) 217-21 (hardly
tenable).

7 Andrewes, HCT iv 63, Connor 1984 (c 22) 44-7, but see Andrewes, HCT v 375-9.

8 See Andrewes, HCT v 363, 400-5.

9 For discussions of what Thucydides is saying here and his actual practice in speech- writing (not
necessarily the same thing), see: Gomme 1937 (a 49) 156-9 and HCT 1 146-8; Andrewes 1962 (c 5)
64-71; de Ste Croix 1972 (G36) 7-16; Stadter, ed. 1973 (c 95); Andrewes, HCT v 393-9; Macleod
1983 (a 82) 52—3, 68—70; Hornblower 1987 (c 52) 45-72.

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SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY, METHOD

TotavTa pev ol Kepxvpa tot einov (1.36.4)), by contrast with the definite
pronouns which introduce and conclude documents (e.g. iv.117.3,
1 19.3; v.17.2, 20.1). The subjectivity allowed for speeches is explicitly
renounced for facts:

as for the events of what was done in the war, I did not think it right to write
them on the basis of eyewitness reports or my own opinion [088’ toy epol iSoxet
responding to 8’ av iSoxovv epol above], but by checking every detail as
carefully as possible, both where I was present and when I heard from others.
Investigation was laborious, because those present at each event did not say the
same things about the same event, but were influenced by their partisanship or
memory.

Only very occasionally does Thucydides underline uncertainty about
facts, but for the battle of Mantinea in 418, where he has occasion to
report a difficulty about finding out the truth (v.68.2), the indefinite
pronoun of uncertainty recurs (v.79.1 xat rj pev payr) toiclvtt) xal on
eyyvTara tovtojv eyeve to, ‘and the battle happened in such a way , as near as
possible to this’).

Thucydides’ high competence and devotion to truth are not to be
doubted, and we can place much greater reliance on what he gives us for
the years 43 5-41 1 than on our materials for most other periods of ancient
history. 10 The difficulty here lies in our dependence on what he gives us.
This is a great deal, but he has assimilated his source material and
concealed his workings. On the other hand, there has inevitably been
selectivity, and we should not expect to be told everything that
happened. Sometimes there is warning, as, for example, when all the
Athenian invasions of the Megarid from 431 to 424 are disposed of in
advance (11.3 1.3), not to be recalled until they are again relevant (iv.66.1,
slightly discrepant). Sometimes there is not, and we are left to wonder,
for example, whether there were indeed only three tribute-collecting
expeditions during the Archidamian War (11.69.1, in. 1 9, iv.50.1), or
whether it is not rather the case that these were regular annual events (cf.
Arist. Ath.Pol. 24.3) which Thucydides only reports when something of
interest occurred. These possibilities on the plane of simple military
operations turn into certainties when we contemplate the more political
developments which he chose to describe in general terms or to indicate
by a brief statement about hostility between individuals (e.g. iv.27.5,
vi. 1 5 .2) when it seemed relevant. Nothing is said of the personal stories
about Pericles’ political difficulties in the years before the war, even
though they were already current in the fifth century. The ostracism of
Hyperbolus (below, p. 442), which must have started as a major political
event, is not reported in its place. That Thucydides does not report an

10 For a recent investigation of why we feel this, see Connor 1985 (c 23).

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event is not a reason for believing that it did not happen, and, if our
interests take us that way, we have a duty to try to fill the gaps. But when
he does report an event, it is only at our peril that we try to reinterpret it
and it will seldom be good method to do so.

These considerations are valid to an even greater degree for the period
479-435. The formal narrative of this period (1.89-118) is set in the
framework of the decision of the Spartan Assembly in 432 that the
Athenians had broken the Thirty Years’ Peace of 446. This decision is to
some extent (see p. 371) motivated by Spartan fear of the growing power
of the Athenians, since they saw that most of Hellas was already subject
to them (1.88). ‘This is how the Athenians came to power’ (1.89.1), and
we are plunged into a fairly detailed narrative of events of 478 and 477 in
a style perhaps nearer to story-telling than that in which the war itself is
described. When the story reaches 477 and the establishment of the
Delian League, we get a more extended second introduction, which
begins by saying that his motive for telling the story of the ‘Fifty Years’
(known to modern scholarship as the Pentekontaetia) was to fill a gap left
by all his predecessors except Hellanicus, and adds, almost as an
afterthought, that the story also demonstrates the growth of Athenian
power (1.97.2). There follows a fairly breathless survey of events down
to the end of the Samian revolt, notably short, after a reflective passage at
1.99 and a brief comment at 1.103.4, of material to direct the reader’s
mind in any particular direction, until a resumptive passage at 1. 1 1 8. 1-2
brings us back to the main narrative. This section on the Fifty Years is
supplemented by a separate account of the careers of Pausanias and
Themistocles (1 . 1 2 8— 3 8), an account very close in style to 1 .89—96, which
may reasonably be thought to be more vulnerable than normal Thucydi-
dean narrative to suspicions about the nature and value of the underlying
evidence. 11

The reference to Hellanicus’ work could point to a date of compo-
sition after 406, since Hellanicus covered events of that year ( FGrH 323a
F 25—6), but need not date more than the sentence in which it appears.
Further speculation is inseparably bound up with more general worries
about the extent of Thucydides’ changes of mind and plan. 12 My own
conviction is that there was a relatively late change of plan and that
material originally written for other purposes has been incompletely
integrated into the work as we have it, 13 but the methodological
principle has to remain unaltered. Even those who suspect that we are
dealing with work by Thucydides which is incomplete and insufficiently
scrutinized depart at their peril from what we actually have.

11 Rhodes 1970 (c 82); Westlake 1977 (c 108).

12 See Andrewes, HCT v 384-444, and below, p. 372.

13 But see Walker 1957 (c 106); Connor 1984 (c 22) 42—7.

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The work of Diodorus of Agyrium in Sicily (frequently Diodorus
Siculus), who was writing in the third quarter of the first century B.C., is a
very different matter . 14 He covers the events of this volume, in Books
xi. 3 8 -fin., xii-xiii of his Bibliotheke. Despite some modern scepticism , 15
the position established by nineteenth-century scholarship 16 still stands,
that his basic method was to summarize one previous author at a time,
and that for the fifth century that author was Ephorus . 17 Ephorus wrote
katagenos, one subject at atime, and it is not clear how much chronology
he gave and how he organized it. As the work comes through in
Diodorus, it has been chopped up into ‘years’ which equate Roman
consular-years and Athenian archon-years; in reality, these were never
coterminous. The operation was conducted with little care or skill, and
the appearance of any event in Diodorus’ main narrative under a
particular year is not to be regarded as evidence for its dating . 18 There are
items at the end, more rarely at the beginning of years, which are derived
from a chronological handbook and are more likely to be reliable. But
the danger of trusting Diodorus’ competence can be seen most clearly
from the fact that he has read his chronological handbook as dating the
reign of Archidamus from 476 10434 (xi. 48.2, xii.3 5.4), but still reports
his activity in the early years of the Archidamian War.

Through Diodorus and from other evidence, we can form some
judgement of Ephorus of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing a universal
history in the third quarter of the fourth century . 19 It is clear that he
relied substantially on good earlier sources for our period, successively
Herodotus, Thucydides and the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (see
below). Sometimes he added from other sources, sometimes he simply
reworked the material for his own purposes. These purposes are not easy
to see through Diodorus’ perhaps selective treatment of him, and we are,
for example, left uncertain whether he attempted a general account of the
political events and cultural achievement of the Periclean age. But there
is no reason to attribute to him a preference for truth over what was
stylistically appropriate and congenial to his own outlook. Sound
method will not construe a sentence of Diodorus closely to provide strict
evidence, and one should not be too hasty to assume information
independent of Thucydides if there is nothing else un-Thucydidean in
the context.

14 On Diodorus in general, see Schwartz 1903 (c 88), Griffith 1968 (c 38) 204—5, 2 37> J-
Homblowcr 1981 (c 51) 18-39.

15 E.g. Laqueur 1958 (c 65); Drews 1962 (c 28); Casevitz 1972 (c 15) xiii-xv.

16 Volquardsen 1868 (C 103); Holzapfel 1879 (c 49).

17 For some qualifications about the history of the West, see CAH vi 2 , ch.5.

18 Modern scholars, nevertheless, particularly for the fourth century, often act on an undeclared
principle that Diodorus is right except when he is demonstrably wrong.

19 On Ephorus in general see Schwartz 1907 (c 89), FGrH 11c 22-35, Barber 1935 (c 9).

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I. SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY, METHOD

One continuator of Thucydides has already been mentioned, the
author of the Hellenica Oxyrbynchia. This work is represented for us by
three groups of papyrus fragments, two small, covering various events
in 409—407, one large, covering events of 396 and 3 9 5. 20 The groups
cohere in style, in intelligence, and in their obvious relationship to
Diodorus. We are dealing with a continuator of Thucydides, presumably
starting with the year 41 1 (with some back-references), writing towards
the middle of the fourth century; the terminal date of the work cannot be
established. The only author’s name which we possess which can be
plausibly attached to it is that of the Athenian Cratippus, but even that
attribution is not without difficulty. 21 The importance of the fragments
lies not only in their direct contributions, but also in the assurance which
they offer that a sober historian lies somewhere behind Diodorus. Much
recent work on the late fifth and early fourth centuries has been based on
a growing preference for Diodorus over Xenophon. 22

Xenophon’s Hellenica is the only continuation of Thucydides which
survives complete. As we have it, it begins a few weeks after the end of
Thucydides’ account in 41 1 and runs down to 362. It is virtually
impossible to establish at what stages in Xenophon’s life, mostly spent in
exile from Athens in the Peloponnese and ending around 350, any given
section was written; differences in attitude and style appear to separate,
for example, the account of the Peloponnesian War to its end (11.2.23 or
11. 3 .9) from the account of the Thirty at Athens. 23 At times more vivid in
detail than Thucydides, the work has had few whole-hearted admirers in
recent years, although its faults perhaps arise more from deficiencies of
information and intellectual grip than from pro-Spartan bias; 24 Xeno-
phon can criticize Sparta and Spartans. The first two books have come
down to us with a spurious and inconsistent chronological framework; 25
Xenophon’s own attempts at chronological accuracy are sporadic and
inefficient.

Theopompus of Chios ( c . 380— c. 315), a more intelligent, but less

20 The only complete edition is McKechnie and Kern 1988 (c 69). The large London group and
the small Florence group are edited by Bartoletti 1959 (c 10), with a commentary by Bruce 1967 (c
14). For the Cairo fragments see Koenen 1976 (c 62).

21 The best discussion of authorship (based on the London fragments only) is by Bloch 1940 (c
1 1). For our direct information about Cratippus, see FGrH 64. He surely covered the right material
and had an interest in Thucydides. The difficulty about the attribution is that Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, though claiming knowledge of Cratippus ( de Thuc. 16), says that no one after
Thucydides wrote by summers and winters {ibid. 9 fin.); our author seems to have done this (rx.i).

22 For the fifth century, see Andrewes 1974 (d 2) and 1982 (g 6), Liftman 1968 (g 25), Ehrhardt
1970 (G 13). For the beginnings of a reaction see Tuplin 1986 (c 101).

23 On Xenophon in general, see Breitenbach 1967 (c 13), Anderson 1974 (c 3). Delebecque 1957
(c 2 j) provides an over-confident attempt to analyse and date the composition of the Hellenica. See
also Hatzfeld 1930 (c 46), Maclaren 1934 (c 70).

24 Breitenbach 1950(0 i2);Sordi 1950-1 (c 93); Cawkwell 1979(0 16) 1 5-46; Montgomery 1965

(c 73). 25 Raubitschek 1973 (c 80) attempts vainly to defend it; see Lotze 1974 (c 67).

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amiable figure, wrote two relevant works. 26 The Hellenica , a continuation
of Thucydides from 41 1 to 394, is thought to be a relatively youthful
work; few fragments survive. We know rather more about two books of
his Pbilippica, which covered much of importance for the fifth century,
Book x, on the Athenian Demagogues, and Book xxv, on Athenian
Lies. 27 The second and probably the first were largely polemic in
character, and Theopompus clearly took pleasure in saying what might
be unusual and unpopular. But he combined learning with an acute
appreciation of some types of political reality, and it is regrettable that
those authors who have transmitted his fragments had a marked
penchant for the sensational. As far as the nature of his narrative in the
Hellenica is concerned, there is important testimony by Porphyry of Tyre
(a.d. 234 —c. 302), an excellent judge, that it was heavily dependent on
Xenophon, but changed for the worse ( FGrH 1 15 f 21).

So far we have been dealing with historians, 28 but this is not an
appropriate designation for the remaining major source for the fifth
century, Plutarch of Chaeronea (a.d. c . 50 -c. 120). 29 Mistakes can be
made if he is taken to be writing history rather than ethical studies of
character, for which facts serve as illustrations, but he can allow interest
in his story to run away with him. We would be substantially worse off
without the one Spartan ( Lysander ) and six Athenian ( Themistocles ,
Aristides , Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades) lives which cover the fifth
century, since an enormous body of reading lies behind them; the older
fashion for believing that it was not his own reading is in disrepute. 30
The Nicias indeed is relatively slight, adding not much more than a few
comic fragments to a reworking of Thucydides’ account, but the rest
draw on a large body of material, even to judge by the authors cited by
name. These range from intelligent fifth-century sources (Ion of Chios,
Critias), through scandal-mongers of the fifth (Stesimbrotus of Thasos)
and the late fourth (Idomeneus) centuries, to the fourth-century philoso-
phers, and significant detail is sought from all of them. It is normally
harder to determine the source of narrative passages, when the source
has not survived. My own inclination is to attach importance to

26 The fragments are collected in FGrH 1 1 5. On Theopompus in general, see Von Fritz 1941 (c
33), Connor 1967 (c 20), Lane Fox 1986 (c 64). 27 A full treatment in Connor 1968 (c 21).

28 Of those not so far mentioned, Aristodemus (not later than second century a.d.; FGrH 104;
also P. Oxj. xxvii 2469) adds nothing to our knowledge of the Ephorean tradition. The work of
Pompeius Trogus (first century B.c.) is potentially more interesting, but the Latin epitome by J ustin
through which we mainly know it is so incompetently executed as to make certainties hard to find.

29 For Plutarch’s historical methods, see Gomme, HCT r $4-84, Stadter 1965 (c 94), Pelling 1980
(c 78). Russell 1963 (c 86) is a particularly valuable study of his dealings with a source we still
possess.

30 The classical attempt to establish intermediate sources is Meyer 1899 (a 87) 1-87, but see
Theander 1951 (c 99), Hamilton 1969 (c 41) xliii-xlvi. Frost 1980 (c 36) 40-50.

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demonstrable use of Theopompus in the Pericles 31 and to the large
number of places in the Alcibiades and the Lysander where the narrative is
visibly closer to that of Xenophon than to that of Diodorus, without
being quite the same. On Porphyry’s showing, these may well depend on
Theopompus, despite Plutarch’s suspicions about his attitudes ( Lys .
30.2).

Plutarch took his material where he found it and as he could use it, and
his judgement about the nature and aims of his sources is not impeccable.
In the Pericles (4.6— 6. i), for example, he uses Plato for Pericles’ education
without noticing the marked irony of the original. On a larger scale, he
has to struggle with the disagreement of his sources about Pericles. He
solves the trouble that Theopompus thought him a demagogue and
Thucydides thought him a great statesman by positing a great change
after the ostracism of Thucydides son of Melesias (16.3). He is less happy
with the difficulty that, whereas Thucydides thought him a great
statesman, everyone else said that he had precipitated an unnecessary and
damaging war for personal reasons, and eventually leaves it unresolved.
Neither he nor Ephorus before him had the ability to evaluate justly the
evidence of Old Comedy and pamphleteers. We should not ourselves be
too confident that we fully understand fragments torn from their
context.

For the last quarter of the fifth century, the contemporary evidence of
comedy and oratory begins to be of value. 32 The evaluation of comic
evidence is a complex matter, but it is frequently possible to distinguish
between a joke or a piece of abuse and the fact which makes the joke or
abuse meaningful; Ar. Knights 465—9 is not evidence for Cleon’s
treachery, but it is evidence for negotiations with Argos (see p. 387
below). Similar situations arise in using oratory. One may sometimes
have to distinguish between a public fact, which must correspond to
something within the jury’s knowledge, and the assertion of a private
fact, which need not. 33 In general, one should always try to envisage the
lost argument of an opponent.

One last literary category remains, that of the Atthides, the chronicles
devoted to Athenian history. 34 Closely related to these is the Athenian
Constitution of Aristotle. 35 The earliest Atthis, composed by Hellanicus

31 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 2 3 3 — 9.

32 Standing by itself is the Pseudo-Xenophontine Athenaion Politeia , sometimes known as ‘the
Old Oligarch’, a short pamphlet, of which the aims and date are disputed. On its aims see, e.g.,
Gomme 1962 (a 51) 38-69, Lewis 1969 (c 66).

33 Take, e.g., Lys. xx. That Polystratus was elected to office by his fellow-tribesmen (2) is a public
fact; that he wrote down nine thousand names (1 3) is not, but the second statement is normally given
more credit than the first. See Andrewes, HCT v 204—6 and p. 475 below.

34 On the Atthides in general, see Jacoby 1949 (c 57) and FGrH m b with commentary.

35 On all matters connected with this work, see Rhodes 1981 (c 83), who does not believe in
Aristotelian authorship. There is no doubt that it was written between 335 and 322 and was
attributed to Aristotle in antiquity. The present volume will be found to vary in its practice as to
how its author is referred to.

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of Lesbos, contained, as we have seen, events of the year 406, though its
composition may have started earlier. A number of successors followed,
notably Androtion, probably a main source for Aristotle and composing
in the 340s, 36 and the third-century Philochorus. 37 Their main import-
ance for us is chronological, since they arranged events by Athenian
archons. Not only direct quotations, but dates given in this form by
scholiasts are likely to go back to them. The temptation is to believe that
a date given by an Atthis must be sound, at any rate for the fifth century,
but occasionally one may wonder how such a date could have been fixed,
even by Hellanicus. The Athenian Constitution , well preserved, but not
without confusion and bias, not only presents special problems, better
discussed in relation to particular episodes, but sometimes makes one
wonder whether a well-preserved Atthis would enjoy the confidence
which the fragments currently command.

Much depends on the evidence which we think Hellanicus could have
found and whether he used it. Here we are dependent on our evidence
from inscriptions on stone. These suggest that some archival material
existed well before the end of the century, not necessarily that it was well
ordered and usable. 38 Decrees of the people on stone only occasionally
bear archon-dates before 42 1 , 39 Building accounts, expense accounts and
records of tribute-payment 40 are datable rather earlier, so that we are in a
position to say that tribute-payment was recorded at Athens from spring
45 3 ( IG i 3 259) and that the first year of payments for the Parthenon was
447/6 ( IG i 3 436). No one doubts that the amount on public record
substantially increased after the reforms of Ephialtes (see below, p. 70),
but towards the beginning of our period it is not easy to see how some
dates could be known for certain. And what applies to dates might apply
still more to the historical circumstances of a fact or decision, even if the
fact or decision was itself dated. Herodotus and Thucydides reflect much
oral tradition, and there was of course much more to be acquired, but,
when we consider the farrago of confused nonsense which Andocides
(hi. 3— 9) could parade to an Athenian jury in 391 as fifth-century history,
we will not be disposed to place much confidence in oral tradition about
Athens’ external history. 41

Thucydides’ disapproval (v.20.2) of archon-dating systems rested on
the ground that to talk about the beginning, middle or end of an
archonship was not precise, though it must be admitted that we do not
necessarily get much further with placing events in his summers and

36 FGrH 324. See also Harding 1977 (c 44). 37 FCrH 328.

38 On public archives in the fifth century, see Boegehold 1972 (d 8).

39 Mattingly 1961 (E45) 124, and 1963 (e 47) 272 n. 73, thinks that virtually none do.

40 Strictly speaking, payments of tribute were not recorded on stone. What we possess (edited in
AT L; see also IG i 3 259-90) are records of the one-sixtieth (a mina in every talent) which went to
Athena.

41 But W. E. Thompson 1967 (c 100) thinks that Andocides was dependent on Hellanicus. On
oral tradition see now Thomas 1989 (a 114).

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12 T. SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY, METHOD

winters. 42 We could add that events separated by one archonship,
though describable as ‘in the third year’ (rpirtf) bei, with inclusive
count), might be anything from 14 to 34 months apart. Nevertheless,
archon-dates have the advantage for us that we do possess a continuous
list of Athenian archons which we can relate to Julian years from 480 to
292 b.c. 43 and that there is therefore a chronological system in use in the
fifth century which we can relate to our own. 44

Athenian archon-years were lunar years starting with a mid-summer
new moon. As lunar years, they needed the frequent intercalation of a
thirteenth month to bring them and their festivals into line with the sun;
they therefore varied in length, having 3 5 4 or 3 5 5 , 3 8 3 or 3 84 days. Fora
long period in the fifth century, ending in 407 or 406, the Council of Five
Flundred operated on a solar year, normally of 366 days, not cotermi-
nous with the archon-year; such years, designated by the name of the first
of the ten secretaries of the year, were occasionally used for dating
purposes ( IG i 3 46.19—20, 364, etc.). We may assume that the dating of
the Atthidographers was intended to conform to a real Attic year. It is
most unlikely that Diodorus understood what he was doing enough to
intend anything of the kind, even for events relating to Athens; other late
historians, notably Arrian and Josephus, also used the sequence of Attic
years for general chronology. Even in Attic contexts, things might
sometimes go wrong; for example, Alcibiades’ return to Athens in 407
(see p. 487 below) cannot have been in the archonship of Antigenes (407 /
6) (Schol. Ar. Frogs 1422).

A fixed point for the start of our period is provided by Herodotus’
confidence (vm.51.1) that Athens was captured in the archonship of
Calliades (480/79). This gives us 480 as the year of Salamis, 45 479 for
Plataea and Mycale, and we can be reasonably confident that Pausanias’
campaign to Cyprus and Byzantium (Thuc. 1. 94-5; see p. 35 below)
belongs to 478. There is equally no doubt that the Peloponnesian War
started in 431; this is confirmed not only by Thucydides’ archon-date
(11.2. 1), but by the eclipse of the sun (27 July) which he places in the same
summer. The interval which he asserts (11.2.1) had elapsed since the
Thirty Years’ Peace seems to place that in winter 446/ 5. 46

For the years from 478 to 446 we are much worse placed. As we have
seen, we have contemporary evidence for dating the start of the tribute
record at Athens to spring 45 3 and of work on the Parthenon to the Attic
year 447/6, but neither of these events is recorded by Thucydides, so that

42 For discussion of the beginnings and ends of Thucydidean seasons, see van der Waerden and
Pritchett 1961 (b 17), Meritt 1964 (g 29), Gomme, HCT in 699-71}, Andrewes, HCT iv 18-21.

43 The framework for this is provided by Diodorus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Dinarchus.

44 How closely we can get to Julian dates by month and day is another matter; see below, n. j 2.

45 Correspondingly the eclipse of Hdt. rx.io.3 is that of 2 October 480.

46 He will have been thinking more precisely at ii.2.1 than at 11.21.1, where he carelessly
transposes the fourteen years into a different context.

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we cannot relate them to his account. No relevant eclipse appears in the
tradition, and the only useful event datable outside the Athenian system
is the death of Xerxes, recently firmly dated to August 46 5 ; 47 Diodorus,
who places it under 465/4 (xi.69), got it right.

Despite Thucydides’ complaint (1.97.2) that Hellanicus’ treatment of
the period was short and chronologically imprecise, his own dates, as he
has left them, are insufficient for a complete chronology of the events
which he describes, and events which he does not mention present even
greater difficulties. 48 He frequently simply links events with temporal
adverbs. Often he does speak in terms of years, but interpretation of the
word ‘year’ has varied. Given his general attitude, conscious use of
archon-years can be ruled out, but it sometimes makes a difference if one
takes a year to be analogous to the use in the main body of the work, a
twelve-month period covering a summer and a winter, or if one takes it
to be a campaigning season. A slight variation on the campaigning-
season concept would be to think of the period from one winter public
funeral to another. That possibility is particularly relevant to us, since we
possess a funeral monument of the Erechtheid tribe with the names of
those who fell ‘in Cyprus, Phoenicia and in Egypt, at Halieis, Aegina and
Megara, in the same year’ ( rov axnov iviavrov; M-L 3 3). This should be
the first year of the Egyptian expedition, 460 or 459 (see below, p. 501).
More trouble arises over doubts as to whether events are recounted in a
rigid order 49 or with forward and backward references; at least one
resumptive passage seems to break the order at 1.109.

A vital clue comes from elsewhere in Thucydides’ work. In iv. 1 02.2-3
it is asserted that the first attempt to settle the site of Amphipolis was
made by Aristagoras of Miletus (cf. CAH iv 2 . 485-6), that the Athenians
came thirty-two years later and met with disaster at Drabescus (cf.
1. 100. 3 and p. 46 below), but came again in the 27th year under Hagnon
and finally founded Amphipolis (see p. 145 below). In what terms these
time-intervals came to Thucydides we cannot know. Fortunately, we
have a date for Hagnon’s foundation, 437/6, twice transmitted, once
apparently from an Atthis (Schol. Aeschin. 11.3 1), once from Diodorus’
chronological source (xn.32 50 ). The disaster at Drabescus consequently
belongs about 46 5/4, 51 with uncertainty about the correlation between
the archon-year for Amphipolis and whatever form of year Thucydides

47 A Babylonian eclipse text has ‘Xerxes* son killed him’ against a date equivalent to somewhere
between 4 and 8 August (Stolper 1988 (b 15) 196-7). The accession of Artaxerxes was known in
southern Egypt by 4 January 464 (Cowley 1923 (a 21) no. 6); the year is referred to as the 21st year of
Xerxes and the accession year of Artaxerxes.

48 The most useful comprehensive treatments are those by Gomme, HCT 1 389-415, AT L ui

158-80, Hammond 1955 (b 5); see also Deane 1972 (b 4), Bayer and Heideking 1975 (b 2), Badian
1988 (b i). 49 As held by AT L in 162.

50 Note that the main narrative event given to the year cannot belong to it.

51 The date of 45 3/2 given by Schol. Aeschin. 11.31 cannot be right, despite Badian 1988 (b i).

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is using, and this should also give us an approximate date for the
neighbouring events, the revolt of Thasos (p. 44 below) and the
beginning of the Helot Revolt (pp. 108-9 below).

The periods before and after 465/4 each contain one major problem.
Thucydides has been universally followed in his belief (shared with
another fifth-century author, Charon ofLampsacus) that, when Themis-
tocles fled to Asia, Artaxerxes was already on the throne; fourth-century
and later authors brought him to the court of his old enemy Xerxes.
Accepting this presents problems if Thucydides’ casual allusion to the
siege of Naxos coinciding with Themistocles’ flight (1. 137.2) is taken
seriously. Thucydides’ statement (1.103 . 0 that the Helot Revolt ended in
its tenth year is in hopeless conflict with any belief in the rigidity of his
chronological order. These and smaller problems are dealt with in the
narrative chapters or in the Chronological Notes at the end of the book;
it will be seen that we frequently run short of events to fill the period. We
are still far from having agreed solutions on major matters. Scholars may
legitimately disagree by up to five or six years about the date of the battle
of the Eurymedon or the end of the Helot Revolt, and for the death of
Pausanias the margin is even wider.

When Thucydides’ main narrative starts, the problems change char-
acter and arguments may concern weeks rather than years. There are
events in the Peloponnesian War for which very close dates in the Julian
calendar can be plausibly argued on the basis of the inter-relationship
between the two Athenian calendars and on epigraphic evidence, 52 but
the historical consequences are seldom substantial. Problems do multi-
ply after the end of Thucydides because of the nature of the sources. It
may be hoped that we do now know whether Alcibiades came back to
Athens in 408 or 407 (below, pp. 503—5), but it takes a complex argument
to get the answer. This volume may sometimes be found surprisingly
sceptical or critical of Thucydides, but chronology is only one index of
the difference between having his guidance and losing it.

52 Meritt’s successive tables of Julian equivalences for the late fifth century (1928 (c 146) 84-1 22;
1952(0 147) 174—9; I 9 ( ^ 1 ( c *49) 202-19; J97iand 1978(0 3o))have been criticized by Pritchett (e.g.
195 7 (c 157) 293—300), on the ground that we cannot control the amount of irregular intercalation
the Athenians may have indulged in, but see Dover, HCT iv 264-70.

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CHAPTER 2

GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

J. K. DAVIES

Throughout Books vii— ix Herodotus refers to those who resisted the
Persian invasion as ‘the Greeks’. 1 His shorthand is understandable, but
over-simplifies: ‘those who, being Greeks, submitted to the Persians
without compulsion’ (Hdt. vii. 132.2) were no marginal group, not to
speak of those Greeks who stood aloof, or had pressing business
elsewhere, or were already willing or unwilling Persian vassals. 2 Yet his
phraseology is important: copied by Thucydides in his survey of the
development of ‘what is now called Hellas’ (1.2. 1), and even by the
otherwise chauvinistic writers of Athenian funeral speeches, 3 it reflects
both the language of war-time diplomacy (Hdt. vn.i 30.3, 132.2, 148.1)
and the poetry of the post-war decades, especially Aeschylus’ Persae and
the epigrams of Simonides. Plainly, to Greeks of the time ‘the Greeks’
were an entity, and ‘Greece’ much more than a geographical expression.
To attempt to define the nature of that entity is therefore not just a task of
historical analysis. It is also, at least in part, a matter of reconstructing a
collective consciousness, and the two tasks are separate but not
independent.

To identify the Greek world as a cultural system is at first sight fairly
easy. One can define it first and foremost by language. For all the
divergences of phonology and vocabulary among and within the four
major dialect groupings (Attic/Ionic, Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, and
Doric/North-west Greek), the dialects were mutually intelligible: the
main perceived gulf was not between dialects but between Greek and all
other languages. The pan-Greek use of Doric and of Homeric Ionic as
literary dialects plainly attuned ears well enough, and Aristophanes
evidently saw little point in jokes of mutual incomprehension when
depicting Athenians’ conversations with Megarians, Thebans, and
Spartans ( Ach . 72.9ft and 86off, Lys. 98off and toyoff). His evidence
therefore counts, even though his concern was with dramatic colour
rather than with philology and though comparison with epigraphic
evidence has revealed some false forms. 4 Again, without mutual compre-

1 ATL hi 97 n. 12: Brunt 1953-4 (a 10) 145 f. Hdt. vii.145.1 is exceptional.

2 Gillis 1979 (a 46) 59-71. 3 Strasburger 1958 (c 98) 23^ 4 Elliott 1914 0 35 ) 20 7 ff-

1 5

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l6 2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

hension, institutions such as the Panhellenic Games, oracles,, Amphic-
tyonies, inter-city diplomacy, or the campaigns of a multi-city alliance
would have been impractical, not to speak of cross-border or maritime
trading: the particularisms of the writing systems for numerals, of month
names, or of calendars in general, though tiresome, were not insuperable
handicaps. 5

In contrast, the boundary between Greeks and others had long since
crystallized in the word barbaros . 6 Significantly, its first known use refers
to language, that of the ‘barbarian-voiced Carians’ ( Kapusv { 3 apf 3 apo-
<f>u>vu>v, Horn. II. ii. 267). Significantly too, it was this word, the very
formation of which betrays a primarily linguistic perception of the
boundary, which came to prevail, rather than the wholly obscure loan-
word karban\karbanos used on occasion by Aeschylus ( Suppl . 1 18, 914;
Ag. 1061). Barbaros retained its linguistic connotation throughout the
fifth century and beyond, but as early as Heraclitus it was also carrying an
extended semantic load: ‘eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men, since
they have barbarian souls’ (D-K 22 b 107). Heraclitus’ point, purely
epistemological, was that by itself the evidence of the senses lacked logos
(rational cohesion), but the implication was that those who lacked
certain essential qualities were thereby ‘barbarian’: those who were
(linguistically) unintelligible were well on their way to being seen as
unintelligent (thus, rightly, Diller 1962 (a 24) 40), and by the early fifth
century the attribution of cultural superiority to Greeks by Greeks was
coming to provide a second, highly subjective definition of Greek
cultural unity. Aeschylus and Herodotus document it in various ways,
which reflect as much the need to explain Greek success in the Persian
Wars as the ethnographic interests and compilations of the previous
generation. True, Herodotus in his philobarbaros mood was quite capable
of contrasting the anthropomorphic simple-mindedness of Greek theo-
logy unfavourably with the greater sophistication of the barbarians (sc.
Persians). 7 Likewise, ethnographic juxtapositions could yield compari-
sons which were neutral, or explicitly dodged value judgements (as in
Herodotus’ report of Darius’ experiment confronting Greek and Indian
funeral customs, 111.38), or even made Greeks come off worst (Hdt.
1. 1 33.2, 1 33.1-2, iv. 79. 3). However, the bias of judgement is represented
rather by the claims of superior Greek ‘arete, the product of wisdom and
strict law’ which Demaratus advances in his conversation with Xerxes
(Hdt. vn.101-4, esp. 102. iand 104.4). Examples to the same effect were
the failure of Danaus’ herald and daughters respectively to respect Greek

5 Dow 19; 2 (a 28); Samuel 1972 (b i i ) 57-1 58.

6 Jiithner 1923 (a 70); Bacon 1961 (j 2); Schwabl 1962 (a no); Backhaus 1976 (j 1).

1 Hdt. 1.60.3 with the unemended text vindicated by Burkert 1963 0 1 j) 97-8 and Lloyd-joncs
1971 Cl 70) 180 n. 45.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 17

gods and the sanctuary their altars offered (Aesch. Suppl. 893 fT), and to
understand that a king was not necessarily a despot (ibid. 365—75), or the
portrait in both Aeschylus and Herodotus of Xerxes’ blasphemous
failure to understand or respect the divine ordering of the world. Small
wonder that for Anacharsis ‘the Greeks were all occupied in the pursuit
of every kind of knowledge, except the Lacedaemonians: who, however,
alone knew how to converse sensibly’ (Hdt. iv.77. 1). No doubt such
claims were the idle invention of the Greeks themselves (Hdt. iv.77.2),
but they reveal well enough the profile which, complacently but with
some justice, they thought they presented to the barbarian world.

Certain shared norms, inherent in shared customs and common values
as expressed in a common language, provided a third facet of Greek
cultural unity. Hybris (offensive behaviour damaging the honour of
another), ate (blind guilty rashness and its destructive consequences),
time (honour), dike (justice), arete (virtue, excellence), charis (grace, obli-
gation, favour), and other complex or loaded words denoted values and
expectations which would willy-nilly be shared by all Greek speakers
and which did to some degree constitute a single interlocking system of
thought and belief. Together with institutions such as blood-guilt,
recognition of suppliants, monogamous marriage, chattel slavery, patri-
linear and patrilocal descent, and inheritance without right of primoge-
niture, they could be thought of as the ‘nomoi (laws/customs) of the
Greeks’. 8 Granted, the phrase should not be pushed too hard. The
divergences among Greek states in legal practice, principle and authority
were too great to allow the Greeks to be a ‘people of the Law’ in the way
the Jews became. Nomos could denote alike the customs of human
society in general, those of non-Greek societies, or those of a particular
Greek polity. 9 Nevertheless, the contrast between Greek freedom under
law and the arbitrariness of a monarch, thought to be characteristic of
non-Greek societies, was plainly felt and expressed.

Lastly, and in some formal sense, cult and ritual helped to define
Greek cultural unity. Not transparently so, for in many ways Greek
religion was not sui generis. The components of Greek ritual - prayer /
benefit/gratitude, altar/shrine/templety/wemr, offerings/procession/festi-
val/contest, purification/oracle/mysteries, polytheism more or less
ordered — were not peculiarly Greek, nor was the Greek mixture of them
unique (Egyptian religion was a closely analogous system, to name no
other). Nor could Greek be clearly distinguished from non-Greek gods.
The origin of many was outlandish or opaque enough, while Pindar
himself provides evidence in just our period not only of the rapproche-
ment between Greek and non-Greek deity which identified, e.g., Zeus

8 E.g. Hdt. vi. 86/3 z; Thuc. 1.41. Other references in Osrwaid 1969 (d 64) 55-7.

9 Finley 1966 (a 57); Osrwaid 1969 (d 64) 20-56.

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l8 2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

with the Egyptian oracle-god Ammon, but also of Greek receptivity for
foreign gods such as the Great Mother. 10 Nevertheless, what matters in a
polytheistic system is not the individual gods so much as the interlocking
structure, and that was specific to Greek culture. It was admittedly a
loose-knit structure, reflecting the interplay in the Dark and Archaic
periods between local multi-functional deities on the one hand and on
the other the greater theological tidiness diffused through the panhelle-
nic shrines and the literary tradition, 11 but precisely for that reason it
managed to accommodate the attachments of deities to specific Greek
localities within a framework which defined the relationship of the major
deities to each other. This framework, inevitably genealogical with gods
so anthropomorphic as the Greek, not only unified into a divine family
the powers of the natural and psychological worlds which the gods were
imputed to command, but also (and thereby) integrated with the divine
order all the social groups and activities which the gods collectively or
individually could be invoked to protect. Here above all the Greekness
of the system was to be found. Just as the family of Olympian Gods had a
uniquely Greek locus, or as the cult titles applied to each deity in its
various capacities - Zeus Horkios (of the oath), Athene Ergane (of
craftsmanship), Hermes Enagonios (of the contest), and so on - were
nearly all transparently Greek, so too the deities and institutions to
which they gave cohesion and protection — lineage, village, ‘tribe’, polis,
occupational group, age-group, or hazard-group such as seafarers or
women in labour — came to define each other, and to define Greek space,
symbolically. ‘In this way the sacrificial community is a model of Greek
society’ (Burkert 1985 (k 16) 255). That such definitions could exclude
non-Greeks from this or that festival or sanctuary (Hdt. v.22) is a
measure of the system’s success in creating Greek consciousness; that
they could also exclude certain sorts of Greek 12 reminds us that other
boundaries could also be important.

If we now think of the Greek world of the 470s not as a cultural system
but as an economic system, its unity is much less perspicuous, for there
are intractable problems involved in relating description to theory in the
domain of Greek economic history. Detailed discussion of them is
reserved to a later chapter focused on Athens (chapter 8g), since the shifts
in behaviour which have provoked much of the recent debate took place

10 Classen 1959 (k 18) (Ammon); Bowra 1964 (j 9) 5 of; Nilsson 1967 (k 69) 747f.

11 Vernant 1974 (a 118) lojff = Vernant 1980 (a 119) 92#; Burkert 1977 (k 13) 331-43;
Sourvinou-Inwood 1978 (k 86).

12 Hdt. 1. 143. 3-144. 1, v.72.3; DGE 773; Alty 1982 (a i) i 5.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 19

there and are best attested there. In the present context, the complexities
emerge best if we distinguish at least three levels or modes or sectors of
economic activity. The first and fundamental one consisted of the
exploitation of an incalculable number of privately owned farms or
estates, large or small, unitary or fragmented, worked by the owner and
his family, by the owner with slave help, by a bailiff and slaves, by share-
croppers, tenants, or serfs, in each case with or without temporary hired
help from labourers of ‘free’ status. These estates produced in very
varying proportions both the Mediterranean staples — cereals (wheat or
barley), olive-oil and wine - and their essential complements such as fruit
and vegetables, and cheese, meat and wool from sheep, goats, cattle and
pigs.

At this primary level the Greek world showed much uniformity but
little interaction. Its uniformity derived in part from its ecological and
climatic limits, in that Greeks had not penetrated as agricultural settlers
either beyond the northern limit of olive cultivation or beyond dry-
farming zones into areas of very low rainfall which required large-scale
irrigation. In part it derived from the overwhelming primacy of the
widely distributed private beneficial ownership of land. Though there
were free landless men, and owners of broad acres, social and military
pressures had so far worked effectively against the polarization of society
between such extremes and in favour of the largely autarkic peasant, each
working his own kleros (inherited lot ) 13 and entitled to status within the
community, or obliged to provide services to it, in proportion to the size
of that kleros. True, some land was owned by deities, by cult-groups, or
collectively, and was rented out to individual tenants , 14 but such
assignments never made Greek deities and temples into the preponder-
ant landholders and economic powers which they became in Egypt, the
East Mediterranean seaboard, or Babylonia. On the contrary the patchy
evidence we have for Attica suggests that gods, cult-groups and
collectives owned at most io per cent of the land in the Classical period,
and probably rather less . 15

Such uniformity and lack of interaction may also have derived in part
from autarkeia (self-sufficiency) as a cultural ideal and as an economic
strategy. As a strategy it still persists in present-day Greece, as revealed
by the practices of having a little of everything and of deliberately so

13 Gschnitzer 1981 (l 63) 37. The importance of serfdom in Thessaly and Laconia derogates
somewhat from this picture, but not totally even there (Cartledge 1979 (f 14) 160-95, esp. 165—70;
Hodkinson 1986 (f 31) 386ft).

14 E.g. Rheneia, half of which was owned by Apollo after the 5 20s (Kent 1948 (l 88)), or the orgas
on the border between Attica and the Megarid (LSCC no. 32).

15 Lewis 1973 (l 94) 198-9; Andreyev 1974 (l i); Walbank 1983 (c 174); Osborne 1988 (l 109).
The allotment to Athena of one-tenth of the land of Lesbos in 427 (Thuc. m.50.2) could formally be
a tithe of war-spoils, but may still be a corroborative hint.

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2 . GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

planning the planting of wheat as to ensure a surplus over consumption
in an average year. 16 Similarly the fragmentation of the landholdings of
one householder, whether in a village or more widely over a landscape or
even over an entire polis-territory, clear in Classical Athens (see chapter
8g below), may indeed have been an inconvenient consequence of
dowry-giving, of division of the kleros among siblings, or of land
division following collective clearance in the Archaic period, but may
also have been a deliberate strategy adopted to spread risks and crops
among a variety of soils and micro-environments. 17 Certainly the fifth-
century Gortyn code encouraged division of the kleros among siblings
{Cod. Gort. iv. 3 7— 48 and v. 28-5 4), as did fourth-century theory and
practice. 18 So too, though the requirements incumbent upon each
Spartiate to contribute specified minimum amounts of barley, wine,
cheese, figs and money to his syssition (communal mess) monthly 19 tell us
nothing about the layout or partition of his kleros , they confirm the
existence, at least in Spartan political society, of a prejudice against
agricultural specialization. It is a moot point how far such prejudices
made autarkeia a cultural ideal. It was a very ambivalent ideal, for though
its main formulations in fourth-century political theory are couched in
terms of the self-sufficiency of the city, 20 earlier literary portrayals were
as much concerned with the self-sufficiency of the individual oikos or
agronomic unit, 21 while the individual or psychological dimension of
self-sufficiency which was later to figure so prominently in Cynicism is
itself prefigured in the later fifth century by Democritus, Hippias of Elis
and Antisthenes. 22

That this cultural ideal had economic effects, in the form of resistance
to and distrust towards markets, exchanges, profit-making, selling and
so forth, can scarcely be doubted, though the texts which illustrate that
resistance are nearly all of the fourth century (Hdt. 11.166-7 excepted).
All the same, however much we may wish to ascribe a leading role to the
autarkic oikos in the Classical Greek economy, the pressures on it and on
the domestic mode of production to yield a surplus were considerable.
Some were dictated by prudence or social pressure, such as the need to
insure against a crop failure next year, to provide a daughter’s dowry, or

16 Forbes 1982 (l 44) 356-76.

17 Forbes 1982 (l 44) 324—5 5 with earlier references and comparative material.

18 PI. Leg. v, 74 5 d; Arist. Pol. 11, 1263321#; J 7 G 141.16-17, with Salviat and Vatin 1974 (l 124)
260.

19 The quantities are variously reported by Dicaearchus f 74 Wehrli and Plut. Lyc. 1 2; Cartledge
1979 (f 14) 170.

20 Main texts: PI. Leg. iv, 704a ff; Arist. Pol. 1, i252b27#, nr, 1 275b2o, rv, 1291310, vn, 1 3 26biff;
Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977 (l 4) 4if, 162-8, 203F

21 Hes. Op. 342—367; Finley 1962 (a 36) ch. 3.

22 Respectively D-K 68 b 246; D— K 86 a i and b 1 2; f 80 Caizzi. For Cynic autarkeia see Rich 1956
(j 88); Paquet 1975 (j 83).

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

to contribute to collective feasts or acts of mutual support via the
complex relationship of gift and counter-gift expressed in the word
eranos , 23 Others, such as the obligations to provide tithes of produce to a
deity (cf. M— L 73) or to bespeak man-days for military or political duties,
were the product of the political systems in which all Greek house-
holders and landowners were caught up. Yet others were the products of
the search for power and social prestige, such as ostentatious generosity
to the poor, 24 conspicuous consumption at funerals of the kind that
Solon had had to legislate against (Plut. Solon 21.6), or duly lavish
performance of the quasi-obligatory public services ( leitourgiai ) for
festival or military purposes which were becoming an increasingly
important component of the public economy in the early fifth century in
Athens and elsewhere (see p. 29 below). Others, lastly, emerged from the
limitations of self-sufficiency. Since few oikoi could produce salt or fish
on their own, let alone pottery, cut stone, spices, metal weaponry or
jewellery, acquisition and exchange of some sort was essential.

Such processes bring us to economic activity at a second level. By the
early fifth century it had of course been an established part of life in
Greek lands and elsewhere for centuries if not millennia. It had been one
of the preconditions of the colonizing movement, and it continued to
provide an impetus for war: Miltiades’ expedition against Paros in 489,
intended simultaneously to satisfy a private quarrel, punish Paros for
medizing, and enrich the participants (Hdt. VI. 1 3 2-3), shows how the
nexus of action subsisted. Yet neither this activity, nor the contacts and
conflicts which it engendered, need have much eroded autarky, in
practice or in theory, or have gone far to create a unified ‘Greek
economy’ or even an ‘economy’ as such in the sense of an autonomous
area of activity, obeying its own behavioural norms and inter-relating
with cultural or political systems as a partner of equal status. On the
contrary, acquisition at this level can very properly be regarded as
embedded in Greek cultures and politics and as largely taking such
institutional and value-buttressed forms as were consistent with the oikos
framework. The principal forms were gift-exchange between chiefs and
aristoi of the kind illustrated repeatedly in the Odyssey, barter, whether the
silent sea-shore variety of the kind ascribed to the Carthaginians in West
Africa by Herodotus 25 or the more sociable but socially edgy variety
engaged in by Homeric prekteres ( Od . vm.162); seizure {avXrj) and
piracy; 26 or straightforward war. Such activity did not have to involve
specifically developed places (markets), specific media of exchange

23 Jameson 1983 (l 8 1) (famine); Gemet 1968 (a 45) (eranos).

24 Notably Cimon’s in just this period (Davies 1971 (l 27) 311).

25 rv.196, with Whittaker 1974 (a 124) 68.

26 Ormerod 1924 (a 94); Bravo 1980 (l 14). For a comparable list relating to the early medieval
period, Grierson 1959 (l 62).

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2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

(coinage), specific callings (merchants), or specific value-structures
(profit-making). Nor did it entail action by any polity; indeed the
colonizing activity of polities, being directed towards moving mouths
towards food and other resources rather than the reverse, worked more
towards re-establishing autarky than eroding it (though emporia, as will
be seen, are a different matter). Equally such a pattern of acquisition must
have begun by being, and must long have remained, marginal. It might
be carried on in marginal time, like Hesiod’s seafaring (Op. 6631! and
6y8fF). It might be conducted by those marginal to agrarian society
because young or landless. 27 Or it might involve the acquisition of
commodities such as jewellery, precious metals, spices, or fine textiles,
which met the needs of status and display but hardly rated as basic
commodities of survival as did corn, or metals for weaponry.

Whether it remained marginal after the Persian Wars is the crucial
problem. There are three usable criteria: (a) the extent to which the actual
volume of goods exchanged or acquired grew, ( b ) the extent to which
trade emancipated itself from gift-exchange, etc., and ( c ) the extent to
which the demands of exchange stimulated institutional innovation
elsewhere, even in the behaviour of polities. 28

The first criterion is non-controversial but of limited value. Some
flows, such as those of metal ores, marble for statuary and architecture,
or Attic painted pottery, had plainly grown considerably in the late
Archaic period. Yet the two latter commodities at least may have been
minor in bulk and value even at their zenith, 29 while other commodities
such as slaves, timber, livestock, and most agrarian products will have
left no direct trace whatever and therefore cannot begin to be measured.
Evidence from the frequency of shipwrecks, of the kind which has
proved diagnostic for later Mediterranean history, is as yet neither large
enough nor sufficiently precise in date to signal trends unambiguously.
The second criterion has aroused more debate, with claims that the flows
mentioned above, and others, can be accommodated within a framework
of commission and patronage. Not all such claims are equally persuasive,
for the ‘trademarks’ on Corinthian and Attic painted pottery suggest
detachment as much from patronage as from domestic production, while

27 Humphreys 1978 (a 66) 165 f.

28 There is little point in adducing a fourth criterion, that of identifying men active in maritime
trading, sometimes for high profit. The standard pre-400 examples, such as Colaeus of Samos (Hdt.
iv. 1 5 2. 1), Sostratusof Aegina (Hdt. iv.152.} with Johnston 1972 (l 8 3) and Johnston 1979 (l 85) 44,
49, 1 89 with 240 nn. 1-2), and possibly the Anaxagores of the Berezan letter (Bravo 1977 (l i 5) =
Bravo 1980 (l 14) 879-85), yield meagre and anecdotal results and are far from proving a structural
change in activity. In general, Reed 1980 (l i 19) ch. 4 and (in sharp contrast of approach) Roebuck,
CAH iv 2 446-60.

29 Webster 1972 (1 177) 42-62, 270-300; Webster 1973 (l 140) 127-45; Starr 1977 (a 115)641!;
Snodgrass 1980 (a 112) 126-9; Snodgrass 1983 (l 129) 18-25; Cartledge 1983 (l 21) 13^.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 23

we know too little of archaic and early classical blacksmithing for its
social position to emerge clearly. 30

The third criterion is the most revealing, for by the early fifth century
there was in place a network of institutions and practices which both
reflected a degree of existing (though patchy and marginal) emancipa-
tion of exchange from ‘political’ contexts in favour of integration across
Greek political and social frontiers, and was to permit a much greater
degree of such emancipation in subsequent decades. Some such practices
were of long standing, such as the pattern of behaviour which since
Homer had been denoted by the words emporos and emporia . 31 Even
older, in fact if not in name, was the emporion such as Ischia or Naucratis.
At first this comprised a port of trade outside the Greek culture area,
settled or frequented by Greeks, but lying within the orbit of an
established power which was able to limit and to define Greek pene-
tration. It differed from a colony in having no formal act of foundation
by a specific polis, in having no agricultural chora, and in involving little
or no subordination of the indigenous population.

However, most of the other constituents of the network were sixth-
century innovations. Prime among them, because requiring decisions
and investment of labour not by private persons but by states or rulers,
were the early stages of harbour constructions and short cuts, 32 for even
if they were undertaken for military or cultic reasons they were available
for other purposes. So, too, the emporion proposed by the Phocaeans c.
540 for the Oinoussai islands (Hdt. 1.165.1) would presumably have
involved harbour installations, while mercantile purposes cannot have
been wholly absent from the planning of Piraeus from 493/a onwards, 33
though Thucydides’ language emphasizes its military aspect (1.93) and
though the horoi (boundary markers) delimiting the emporion there ( IG
i 3 1 101) appear to be as late as c. 450. Another innovation taking shape in
this period was the use of coinage. Though few would now claim that its
adoption throughout most of Greece in the course of the sixth century
had anything intrinsically to do with exchange among individuals, rather
than fiscal payments to the state and distributions or payments by the
state for services to it, none the less the hoard evidence does suggest that
by the late sixth century certain coinages at least, especially those of
Athens, Macedonia and Thrace, were being used to facilitate long-

30 Burford 1972 (l 18) passim\ Johnston 1974 (l 84); Johnston 1979 (l 85) 48—53. Contra
Humphreys 1978 (a 66) 169 and Cartledge 1983 (l 21) itf.

31 Knorringa 1926 (l 89); Bravo 1974 (c 122); Bravo 1977 (l 1 3); Starr 1977 (a 1 1 3) 5 5 ff; Mele
1979 ( L 100); Velissaropoulos 1980 (l i 37); Reed 1980 (l i 19).

32 Surveys in Blackman 1982 (l 7) and Parry 1987 (l 112).

33 For the mercantile aspect, Boersma 1970 (i 25) 3 7f, 46—50, with Judeich 1931 (1 85) 430-56;
Gomme, HCT 1 261-70; Martin 195 1 (1 105) 105-10; Panagos 1968 (l i i i); Garland 1987 (l 5 1).

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2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

distance exchange. 34 Be it said, however, that further innovation was
required in order to supplement capital concentration via oikos- or
patronage-relationships by more formalized, impersonal, interest-bear-
ing loan arrangements, for only such arrangements could exploit the
growing pool of large-value coinage fully enough to create something
like a real money market. One of the two innovations which these
pressures and opportunities produced, viz. the bottomry loan, was
probably a creation of the generation after the Persian Wars, though it is
not attested till 421 (though evidently familiar enough by then) and only
for Athens in the fifth century. 35 It is certainly not chance that the other
financial innovation of the mid-fifth century, which stemmed from the
gradual though still weak monetization of Greek economies, viz. the
bank (jpa ne^a, ‘table’), probably developed in the same period, being
first attested, albeit by dubious evidence, in Corinth in the 460s.
However, its function seems to have been primarily that of facilitating
the exchange of coin of one currency or weight standard for that of
another, and only secondarily that of accumulating and lending out
capital sums deposited. 36

However, a further sub-group of linked innovations, certainly under
way in the immediate post-war period in some localities, was to have far
more radical consequences. These innovations comprised the start of
small-value coinages, of small-scale retail trading, of the gradual shift of
the locus of such exchange away from the periphery towards the centre
of the civic space of a polity, and of the consequent enlargement and
redefinition of the function of the Agora. Each of these processes was
patchy, long-drawn-out, and the product of different concatenations of
circumstances. Small-value coinage, for example, took decades to move
down from the threshold represented in early Ionian issues by the
relatively common but still high-value 1/96 fractions of the electrum
stater even to that represented in later Archaic Ionia and the Wappenmun-
spn period of Attica by silver ^-obols, 37 let alone further down still. The
first experiments with base-metal coinages (iron and bronze, cast or
minted) at Olbia and in south Italy and Sicily do not much pre-date 450,
though interestingly the suggestion that Athens should follow suit was
being made before 445. 38 Yet the smaller-scale trading which such

34 Most recent summary by K raay, CAH iv 2 , ch. 7 d, building on Cook 1958 (c 183); Kraay 1964
(c 188); Price and Waggoner 1975 (c 196); Kraay 1976(0 190) 318-28; Kraay 1977(0 191); Grierson

1977 (c 185).

35 P. Oxj. 2741 = Eupolis F 192.96-8 k— a, with de Ste Croix 1974 (l 122) 44 and n. 13; Harvey
1976 (l 66); Reed 1980 (l 119) 54# with non. 54 (dismissing earlier alleged evidence).

36 [Them.] Ep. vi and vii, with Bogaert 1966 (l 10) 1 3 5-44 and Bogaert 1968 (l i i) 94f, 305—7.

The word xpuoa/xoijSos: in Aesch. Ag. 437 proves - unsurprisingly — the concept formulated before
458. 37 Kraay 1964 (c 188) 87f; Kraay 1976 (c 190) 3180. 2.

38 Price 1968 (c 195) 94, on the assumption that Dionysius {PA 4084), to whom Callimachus (f
430 ap. Ath. XV.669D) attributed the suggestion, did not return from Thurii.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

coinage assisted was clearly in being well before then. Immediate proof
comes not so much from Cyrus’ reported rude remarks, at a dramatic
date in the 540s, about Greeks who cheat on oath while buying and
selling in the Agora (Hdt. 1.153- I— 2 )> f° r that mot presumably stems from
the later contrast between him as father {pater ) and Darios as petty
retailer {kapelos, Hdt. 111.89.3); but rather from Hipponax’ use of the verb
kapeleuein (F79.19 Degani). Yet Cyrus’ mot is historically important, for
he is made to locate those deplorable activities ‘in the middle of the city’
(ev /x6ct]7 Tjj TToXei). Such a locus was new. The archaic Greek Agora as an
open space had had political, legal, cultic, theatrical and athletic-
competitive functions, 39 but the place for such exchange as took place
outside the framework of social relationships seems to have lain on a
frontier or in a no-mans’-land, whether physical, such as a seashore (cf.
later emporia and towns called Agora (cf. Hdt. vm.58.2)), or political,
such as the ‘frontier Agora’ from which murderers were excluded by
Draco’s law. 40 That such exchange should enter the Agora proper - and
in fact should end by extruding much other public activity from it, and
by permanently altering the uses of words such as dyopd^as or ayopa
itself - was a long-drawn-out process, not reflected in literary texts till
Herodotus, 41 but one weighty enough in its eventual impact to yield two
separate functionally distinct agorai at Athens, Piraeus and elsewhere. 42

A final group of innovations returns us to the seaways, the ships and
the seafarers. First, the late sixth and early fifth centuries saw knowledge
about far-away places rise from the level of prodigies and fabulous tales
to that of increasingly sober and practical descriptive treatment.
Granted, some parts of this process were known to Greeks only at
second hand, such as the account by a Carthaginian, the elder Hanno, of
his circumnavigation of Africa c. 600 b.c. (Hdt. iv.42), or not at all, such
as the younger Hanno’s report of his colonizing expedition down the
West African coast to Senegal if not to Mt Cameroun. 43 However,
knowledge of the Description of the Earth by the Milesian Hecataeus
should have been well diffused by the 470s, and will have been
supplemented by other more autobiographical travel descriptions, such

39 McDonald 1943 (1 100) ch. 4; Martin 195 1 (1 105) 1 49fF; Wycherley 1962 (1 184) joff; Martin
1974 (1 107) 30-47, 266—75; Kolb 1981 (1 92) 1— 19.

40 IG i 3 104.27-8, with Davies, CAH tv 2 369 n. 7; Martin 195 1 (1 105) 284ff. Add now Peacock
1982 (a 97) 1 j6f for comparative material.

41 Martin 195 1 (1 105) 2 79ff; Epig. Horn, xiv.5 is undatable. Cod. Gort. vn.io— 1 1 already uses agora
to denote the slave-market.

42 Thessaly: Arist. Pol. vn, 133^30#. with Newman ad loc. and Xen. Cjr. 1.2. 3-5 (cAu idepal
ayopaC). Athens: Apollodorus FGrH 244 F m 3, with Oikonomides 1962(1 1 18), Wycherley 1966 (1
186) (sceptical); Travlos 1971 (1 171) 1; Kolb 1981 (1 92) 20-2. Piraeus: Garland 1987 (l 51) 14 if,
15 2f. Distinct commodity markets in fourth-century Athens: Stroud 1974(0 167) 180; Sparkes 1975
(1 156) 132.

43 TextGGiVfi 1— 14 (Eng. tr. in Carpenter 1966 (a 1 5) 82-5); Cary and Warmington 1963 (a 18)
6 3flf; Momigliano 1975 (a 89) 137 (probably 500-450); full discussion in Huss 1985 (a 68) 75-83.

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zG 2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

as Skylax’ account of his voyage from the Indies to Suez, and possibly
also by Euthymenes of Massilia’s earlier account of the African coast or
by whatever lay behind the western Mediterranean portion of Avienus’
Ora maritima , 44 Secondly, shipbuilding had shown a radical change in the
generation before 480, with a real and major divergence between
warship and merchantman. The two had long been distinguished as
much by the presence or absence of a beak as by shape, so that
Herodotus’ report that the Phocaeans used to make their western
Mediterranean voyages in pentekonters, not in round ships (11.163. 1—2),
is less odd than it appears, given the likely dangers from Etruscan or
Carthaginian warships or pirates. That that expedient was unsatisfactory
is suggested by the invention of the ‘samaina’, ‘which has a beak turned
up like a pig’s snout, but is rounder and belly-shaped, so that it can both
carry cargo and sail swiftly. It was so called because it appeared first in
Samos, on the initiative of Polykrates the tyrant’ (Plut.Pifr. 26.4). The
idea presumably was to have it both ways, by increasing cargo space
without sacrificing offensive capability, but that the risk-benefit balance
was tipping even further towards larger capacity and smaller crew is
clear from the development by the 5 20s of the merchant ship propelled
entirely by sail. 45 It is no accident that such a ship type would have best
suited the lengthy round trips from the Aegean to the Black Sea and
back, which were to become (if they were not already) a prime
component of Classical Greek seaborne trade and for which the essential
staging posts were mostly in place by then. 46 Teus plainly was not the
only place to be permanently dependent on imported grain by c. 470
(M— L 30A). Such trips are evidence of that profound revolution in the
logistics of antiquity which comprised moving a staple food supply to its
consumers at an acceptable social price instead of moving them to it
through colonization. As later in Rome and Constantinople, so now in
the Aegean and probably at Carthage too, the political consequences of
that revolution were to overwhelm household autarky, to involve the
state in the process, and hence to help both to define the shape and to
broaden the scope of the public economy. Slowly, jerkily, and via a
process responding to need but mostly flowing outside the political
framework, the single loosely inter-related economic system, which the
Greek world and some of its non-Greek neighbours had long been for

44 Euthymenes: FHG xv 409, with Hdt. 11.22, if it is not a forger’s version of the younger Hanno.
Avienus: Hind 1972 (l 67); Boardman 1980 (a 6) 224.

45 First secure attestation on the Attic black-figure cup, London BM b 436; reproduction and/or
discussion inCasson 195 9 (a 19) 86— 7 and pi. 7; Morrison and Williams 1968 (a 91) 109 Arch. 85 and
pi. 19; Casson 1971 (a 20) figs. 81—2; de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 393-6; Humphreys 1978 (a 66) i68f,
1 71; Snodgrass 1983 (l 129) 1 6f.

46 Hdt. vh . 147.2, with Noonan 1973 (l 104); Davies 1978 (a 23) 58; Bravo 1983 (l 1 5). Scepticism
in Garnsey 1985 (l 53) and Garnsey 1988 (l 54) 107-19.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

certain marginal purposes, was being expanded to take in an even greater
proportion of flows, transactions and commodities.

Developments of a rather different kind were affecting the public,
intellectual, and social life of the 470s and were exposing the strains and
contradictions inherent in the very institution which had shaped Greek
political life for so long, the republican polis. They affected alike its form,
its inner dynamics, and its external relationships, and interacted so
closely with the economic shifts just described as to erode the presuppo-
sitions of value and function which had underpinned it since the eighth
century.

To diagnose crisis, at a moment when the Persian Wars had just been
fought in defence of and in terms of the polis and when their outcome
had to all appearance vindicated it as a system of government, may seem
as paradoxical as it is unconventional. Indeed, at first sight it is the
consolidation of the polis-form of polity in the 470s which strikes the eye
rather than its erosion. For one thing, tyranny, monarchy and dynasteiai
(narrow oligarchies) were on the retreat. Even before the Persian Wars
many had succumbed to that pressure for wider participation in decision
making, and thereby for greater equality between ruler and ruled, which
had come to be labelled isonomia , 47 In the post-war period the fact that
many such regimes, such as those in Thessaly or Thebes, 48 had been pro-
Persian helped to quicken the rout, especially in the vulnerable areas of
Asia Minor and Propontis, where the Athenians had a compounded
interest in eliminating them. 49 However, the same process was under
way from purely internal impulses in Cyrene, where the Battiad
monarchy was overthrown by a democracy sometime after 460, 50 in
Sicily, where by the late 460s the Deinomenid regime had been
dismantled and the republican status quo restored (Diod. xi. 76.4-6) (see
chapter 7), and even in Epirus if Thucydides’ note on the Chaones and
Thesproti as kingless in 430 (11.80.5) has significance. In the Greek-
speaking area indeed, only Sparta, Molossia, Macedonia and Cyprus had
monarchies deep-rooted enough to survive the egalitarian winds of the
fifth century.

Fashionable instead were the various processes loosely called synoe-
cism. 51 The use of the term in Greek sources is unhelpfully elastic,

41 Ostwald 1969(064). 48 Forrest, CAHiu 3 . 3, 291-9.

49 See the survey in Berve 1967 (a 5) 1 186-9.

50 Schol. Pind. Pjtb. iv inscr. b, and Arise, fr. 61 1.7, with Chamoux 1953 (f 17) 202-10; Mitchell
1966 (f 51) 108—13; Hornblower 1983 (a 65) 58-62.

51 Kuhn 1878 (f 40), still valuable; Kahrstedt 1932 (f 38); Moggi 1976 (f 5 3); Hornblower 1982 (a
64) 78.

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2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

ranging for this period alone from (i) joint foundation of colonies
through (ii) the forcible transfer of population, (iii) imposed amalgama-
tion, (iv) the creation of an urban centre, and (v) the creation of a political
central place, to (vi) annexation. 52 To such uses, moreover, one may add
not only examples which are inferred rather than directly attested, 53 but
also (with reservations) federal structures such as the Arcadian League.
The boundaries of the phenomenon are therefore not closely definable.
None the less the early fifth century does appear to have experienced a
clear shift of mood towards amalgamating political units or towards
unifying areas which had hitherto been little more than ethnic or
geographical expressions and had no one political central place. Gelon’s
creation of a Greater Syracuse in the 480s exemplifies the former, while
the synoecisms of Elis, Mantineia and Tegea in the 470s may exemplify
the latter to varying degrees. 54

To the extension of polis-style government and the extension of
participation in its processes may be added the extension of its role and
responsibilities. This took various forms. It is clear, for example, in the
area of cult, where the late Archaic period had seen religion and the state
redefine themselves and their function in ways which subtly but
significantly favoured the state. 55 So, too, the state’s power to coerce
recalcitrant members was slowly advancing. At the social level, though
the drastic and unparalleled inculcation of social values and skills, which
was encapsulated in the Spartan agoge, had not yet become the social
paradigm elsewhere in Greece that it was to become by the 420s, 56
Athens at least may already have been developing more formal means of
control over public order and pirate action; the first employment of a
corps of Scythian archers as a police force may belong in this period, 57
while the capacity to prosecute was being extended, via a process
impossible to date or to trace in detail, to a wider range of persons and to
a wider range of offences. 58 At the political level the prosecutions of
Miltiades in 493 and 489, the Athenian ostracisms of the 480s, the
imitation of ostracism elsewhere, 59 or the various legal or quasi-legal
actions successfully mounted against no fewer than three Spartan kings

52 Respectively (i) Thuc. 1.24.2, vi.z.6 etc., with Moggi 1975 (f 52); (ii) Hdt. vn.156; (iii) Str.
viii. 3. 20, with Moggi i976(f 53) 166 no. 26; (iv) Thuc. 1.10.2; (v) LSS 10. col. ii, with Parke 1977(1^
71) 31 and Hornblower 1982 (a 64) 790. 9; (vi) Paus. vm.27.1, with Moggi 1976 (f 53) 127 no. 22.

53 E.g. Olbia and Berezan (Graham 1978 (f 27) 106), or the Mesa ra plain in Crete (Kirsten 195 6 (a

73) * i°)-

34 Thus orthodoxy (e.g. Moggi 1976^55) 13 iff nos. 23-5), but there is room for doubt (below,
p. 103). 55 Davies, CAH iv 2 368—88.

56 Ollier 1933 (f 55) 42—54, 1 19-38; Tigerstadt 1965 (f 68); Rawson 1969 (a 104) i2ff; Hodkinson
1983 (f 30) 245 ff, with earlier references.

57 Andoc. rrr.5 and Aeschin. rr. 173, with Plassart 1913 (o 68) and Vos 1963 (r 173).

58 Mainly by th egraphe procedure, but also by apagoge and endeixir. Hansen 1976 (d 30A) 1 1 5.

59 Schoi. Ar. Knights 855; Diod. xi. 86. 5—87.6.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 29

within fifteen years, all suggest that public opinion was willing to create
and to use formal procedures (rather than acquiescence or assassination)
against errant politicians in a way barely conceivable fifty years
previously.

At the fiscal level, too, increased pressure must be assumed, for even
though misthos (pay) for public office lay nearly a generation in the future,
even at Athens, new needs were outstripping older modes of public
finance. There had of course long been tithes, fines and confiscations,
while the linkage between socio-economic ranking and the responsibi-
lity to contribute, militarily or otherwise, to the needs of the state, which
was encapsulated in the barely translatable word telos (property /obli-
gation group ), 60 re-emerged with the four Solonian property-classes
( Ath.Pol . 7.3), and survived to provide the background to oligarchic
notions of distributive justice. So, too, communities had long assigned a
temenos (precinct) to a god or an official on the understanding that its
produce or revenues would defray the expenses of cult or office. Yet the
often morally dubious fiscal improvisations attributed to sixth-century
tyrants in [Aristotle]’s Oeconomica 11 and elsewhere were already symp-
toms of strain, and one military innovation in particular - the trireme -
must have generated further and greater pressures. By our period its
impact on Greek public finance was being felt all over the Aegean, and if
Herodotus’ terminology can be trusted it had yielded by the early fifth
century a uniform solution in the form of the trierarchy. Attested at
Samos in 494 (Hdt. vi.14.2) and at Aegina, Naxos and elsewhere (Hdt.
vii.i8i.i, vm.46.3, viii. 90.4) as well as Athens in 480, this fiscal
expedient reflected the new relationship imposed by the necessity for the
state to meet the capital cost of the hulls . 61 Part magistracy, part an
extended telos- type obligation, part aristocratic euergetism, it cleverly
accommodated the new fiscal interests of the state within the archaic
value-framework of time (prestige) and charis (obligation ). 62 Much the
same is true for the other form of leitourgia or public service, viz. that
concerned with the provision of spectacles and contests during religious
festivals, which appeared in its fully developed form first in Athens with
the choregia in 502/1 and speedily proliferated there, though unlike the
trierarchy it seems to have been slow to spread elsewhere . 63

To some such pressures, then, some Greek communities could and
did respond from the early fifth century on by extending and adapting

60 Van Effenterre 1979 (l 135) 27ft is now the point of departure; add (on its likely Mycenaean
ancestry in / teretaf or j/erejaf) Baumbach 1968 (c 1 1 5) 2 37ff and Gschnitzer 1981 (l 63) 19#.

61 A vestige of the older system of privately built hulls at Hdt. vm.17.

62 Veyne 1976 (a 120) 186-200; Davies 1981 (d 18) 92—105.

63 Capps 1943 (c 125); Davies 1967(0 17). The word chorcgos at Hdt. v.83.3 (Aegina) and Arist.
Pol. vm, 1341333 (Sparta) probably has its intrinsic meaning 'chorus-leader’, as in Aleman’s
Partfxneion (line 44 Page).

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2 . GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

the polis and its governmental mechanisms. Yet — and herein lies the
basic paradox — the more the polis increased and consolidated its role in
Greek society, the more it encountered contradictions which could not
be resolved within that polis framework. The main contradiction was
military. Thessaly, for example, was to see in the fifth century a hitherto
effective mechanism for unifying military resourced on land eroded by
separatist pressure from the growing individual poleis. 64 Maritime
polities faced the opposite pressure. Thucydides is explicit that the costs
of triremes and trierarchies bore heavily on the Athenian allies and
induced many of them (he implies in the 460s) to commute ship
contributions to the payment of tribute (1.99). Thucydides sees this
within a context of their capacity or incapacity to revolt, but it has wider
implications; the logic of contemporary naval technology was dividing
Greek states into two classes, those who could and those who could not
keep up with the costs.

The effect was compounded by international pressures. In the West,
where polis-particularism had shallower roots than in Old Greece and
where self-identification as ‘Ionian’ or as ‘Dorian’ provided an alterna-
tive exploitable focus, Carthaginian encroachment provided reason - or
excuse - first for tightly interlocking dynastic connexions and later for so
enlarging the polis, by forcible amalgamations and transfers of popula-
tion, that Greater Syracuse by 480 was no longer a polis but a territorial
state. Likewise the dwarf states of Old Greece had been dragged willy-
nilly back into the concert of eastern Mediterranean powers by half a
century of Persian invasions. As in 546 and 499, so too in 491 and 481
resistance had entailed cooperation and alliance, for no one polis by itself
could survive militarily in such an environment, while the successive
decisions taken by the Aegean seaboard states at Samos in 479,
Byzantium in 478 and Delos in 477 had indicated that here too, as in the
Peloponnese, military activity would take place for the foreseeable
future within the framework of a regional hegemony. The contradiction
was fundamental. The polis as a military unit on its own was dead, while
the polis as an administrative and cultural unit was not.

That by itself would have been enough to constitute a fifth-century
crisis, but other contradictions and tensions in post-war Greek society
made it worse. For example, the more the polis extended its range of
activity, and opened its polity or even its magistracies to all citizens, the
more anomalous became the position of those whose activities put them
without the city framework. Seers ( manteis ) and their more disreputable
confreres, the chresmologoi and shamans, were a case in point, as shown by
the way the Spartans had to break all their own rules in order to

64 Hornblower 1983 (a 6j) 79-83; Kraay 1976 (c 190) iij— 17.

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

accommodate the talents of Teisamenos of Elis. 65 So were poets and
artists such as Bacchylides or Polygnotus or Alcamenes, who moved
from commission to commission. So too were the many Aegean
islanders who rowed more and more Athenian ships as commutation
gathered pace — mercenaries in all but name. 66 So, too, were the sea-
traders ( emporoi and nauklerot), whose economic role might well come to
be central to the existence of the very cities which had no control over
them and within which they had no intrinsic legal standing. 67

A second, closely allied, contradiction was that presented by chattel
slavery in the household, in craftwork, in mining and in agriculture. The
problem here was not so much that presented by the conceptual conflict
between slave as instrument and slave as human being, which Aristotle
later found so intractable {Pol. 1253b 2yff), nor even the conflict between
slavery as an efficient (because mobile and controllable) means of
concentrating a labour force for productive or display purposes and
slavery as intrinsically inefficient, because goodwill and cooperation
could not be extracted from a structurally alienated workforce. 68 Rather,
the problem arose from the presence, within a polis and its chora, of a
growing (it seems) number of deracines of alien speech and culture,
whose labour was necessary (or highly desirable) but whose presence
was potentially dangerous, whose immediate ambitions for freedom and
wealth challenged the very roots of a descent-group-defined agrarian
society, and whose life-style, if ‘living apart’ from their masters as
money-making investments for the latter, might differ so little from that
of poor citizens as to present status contradictions of their own.

A third tension, visible in the literature and thought of the 470s, is that
between, on the one hand, paradigms of the world couched in terms of
myth and, on the other, systematic non-theistic descriptions of the world
and of man’s predicament based either on observation or on the primacy
of reasoned argument as the way to truth. It was precisely because the
Hesiodic tradition, best represented in this decade by Pindar, was
challenged equally strongly from two basically incompatible directions,
that Greek intellectual life, not (so far as one can see) hitherto greatly
fractured or discordant or at loggerheads with political life as such (which
is not to say that poets might not be fiercely partisan or denunciatory),
now began to show increasing alienation from the traditional framework
of Greek political, social and cultural life. Already in the previous
generation Xenophanes had been caustically questioning the point of

65 Hdt. ix. $3-6, with Kett 1966 (k 50); Nilsson 1967 (k 69) 618— 20; Burkert 1977 (k 13)20.

66 On whom Roy 1967 (a 107) 322.

67 de Stc Croix 1972 (g 36) 264—7, 393—6; Van Effentcrrc 1979 (l i 36); Reed 1981 (l 1 19) passim.

68 Thus Vernant 1974 (a 1 18) 29.

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3 2

2. GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

athletic victories and other aristocratic values. Heraclitus in his idiosyn-
cratic way had more recently followed suit, while the Pythagoreans in
south Italy were making their Freemason-style groups the main focus of
social life, and more and more intellectuals were moving away from their
own cities to where the action was. 69

A fourth source of tension is identified - or caricatured - after the
event by the Old Oligarch: ‘the demos has put down the athletes at
Athens and the practitioners of mousike’ ([Xen.] Atb.Pol. 1.13). Prepos-
terous at first sight in the century of Sophocles, his allegation is echoed
and expanded, at least for music proper, by Plato (Laws 111,700-1) and
has some truth. The Archaic period had seen the emergence, and
differentiation from a continuing peasant society, of an upper-class
cultural and behavioural norm. It was multiply characterized: by affected
ostentation in dress; by social contacts and intermarriage across political
frontiers; by ritualized conflict and competition at the Panhellenic
Games and elsewhere; by institutions of restricted membership such as
the palaistra or the symposion with their accompanying etiquette and
social prestige; by being both the locus and the focus of predominant art
forms such as dithyrambic, lyric, or elegiac poetry, the kouros statue, or
elegant table-ware in silver or fine pottery; by pederasty; by the specific
vogue-words kalos kagathos (perhaps ‘gentleman’) and asteios (urban,
witty); and by the gravitation of those involved and of their activities
away from the chora of the gauche unaccomplished country bumpkin
with his sheepskin cloak towards the nucleated polis with its ‘polite’
atmosphere. 70 This high urbane sub-culture of Archaic Greece was now
subject to erosion — or rather was so attractive as to generate pressure to
extend it down the social scale. The sudden emergence of formal schools
in the 490s, even in such remote places as Astypalaea, is one symptom of
pressure. 71 Another is the break-up of the formal frontal kouros- pose in
sculpture from c. 480 onwards in favour of the sort of representation of
action or of heroic archetype which had already long come to predomi-
nate in the much cheaper and therefore less aristocratic bronze or
terracotta statuettes. A third is the amalgamation of upper-class lyric
with the significantly out-of-town bucolic Dionysiac ritual of the komos
and the tragos, in order to produce the upstart, hybrid (if not bastard),
vulgarly spectacular art forms of comedy and tragedy which appealed to
a mass audience newly culturally enfranchised and which put other
poetic art forms in the shade.

69 Xenophanes D-K b z; Heraclitus D-K b 1 5. Sec Ostwald, ch.8^ below.

70 Various aspects of this general picture in Gschnitzer 1981 (l 63) 6ofF, 1 z6ff; Roebuck, CAH
m 2 . 3, 438—41; Lloyd 1983 (a 79); Bowie 1986 (j 5).

71 Paus. vi. 9. 6, with other references in Marrou 1956 (a 84) 369 n. 7; Immerwahr 1964 (1 79);
Harvey 1966 (l 65) 629-35; Giroux 1980 (l 59).

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GREECE AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

To these areas of difficulty we can add others, such as the tension in
state after state between an existing polity based on subordination -
whether by serfdom, helotization, or the control of non-participant
outlying communities by a dominant centre - and an ideal polity based,
like most colonies, on equality and likeness (iirl ta~Q * at ' ofiotq.). The
picture which emerges is of a post-war Greece in the grip of what was at
best uncomfortable transition in many fields of social activity at once, if
not of acute crisis. That is not a conventional view of the early fifth
century, but the case stands.

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CHAPTER 3

THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 b.c.

P. J. RHODES

I. THE FOUNDATION OF THE LEAGUE

It is unlikely that the Greeks who fought against the Persians at Plataea
in 479 entered into any commitment relevant to this chapter. There may
well be authentic material behind the various texts of an oath said to have
been sworn before the battle (Tod, GHI 204, 21-5 1; Lycurg. Leoc. 80-1;
Diod. xi. 29. z— 3: Theopomp. FGrH 1 1 5 f i 5 3 rejected it as an Athenian
fabrication), but the clause requiring temples destroyed by the Persians
to be left in ruins does not appear in the inscribed version and is hard to
accept. 1 After the battle the Plataeans were promised freedom from
attack on condition that they cared for the graves of the fallen (Thuc.
11.72, 111.58.4), but the Greek festival of freedom appears to be a
Hellenistic institution, and Plutarch’s combination with this of a Greek
force to wage war against the barbarian is unlikely to represent a decision
taken after Plataea (Diod. xi.29.1; Plut. Arist. 21. 1-2). 2

However, if we may believe Herodotus, the question of carrying the
war back to Persian territory and liberating Greeks under Persian rule
was raised in 480—479. Thoughts of the future attributed to Themisto-
cles (vm. 108.4, 109.5) may be suspect, but there is no need to doubt the
envoys appealing for the liberation of Ionia early in 479 (vm . 1 3 2), or the
futher appeal from Samos later in the year (ix.90). After the battle of
Mycale, we are told, the Greeks considered abandoning Ionia and giving
the lonians new homes in Greece: the proposal was supported by the
Peloponnesians, but successfully resisted by the Athenians, who claimed
a special relationship with the lonians; after which Samos, Chios, Lesbos
and ‘the other islanders who were campaigning along with the Greeks’

This chapter, written at short notice in 1985/6, gives an argued narrative based on the review of
problems by Rhodes 1985 (e 68). Major works for the whole of this chapter are Meritt*/ al. 1939—5 3
(e 5 5), Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3). These will be cited as ATL and Meiggs respectively.

1 The clause is accepted by Dinsmoor 1941 (1 59) 158 n. 322; Raubitschek 1965 (c 163) 516—18;
Meiggs 504—7; and (though he finds several examples of its breach) Boersma 1970 (1 23) 50-1, etc. It
is rejected by Siewert 1972 (f 65) 102-8. Cf. CAH iv 2 604,

2 There are attempts to defend part of this by Larsen 1933 (F42) 262-4, Raubitschek i960 (a 102)
and 1965(0 163), Meiggs 507— 8. For the arguments against, see ATL in 101— 4; Brunt J95 3— 4 (a 10)
153—6; Frost 1961 (c 35); Etienne and Pierart 1975 (c 131).

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THE FOUNDATION OF THE LEAGUE

(but not, it appears, any mainlanders) were admitted to the Greek
alliance (ix. 106).

Herodotus has conditioned us to thinking of the Persian Wars as
ending in 479, but the Greeks could not be certain at that point that the
Persians would not attack again, and it should cause no surprise that in
478 the Spartan-led Greek alliance continued the war— on a smaller scale,
because there was no longer an immediate threat to Greece. Pausanias,
who had commanded on land in 479, took command of the fleet; and it
may have been in the same year that Leotychidas, commander of the fleet
in 479, took a land expedition to punish medizers in Thessaly (Hdt.
vi. 71). 3 Pausanias first sailed out of the Aegean and overran most of
Cyprus (to which the Persian fleet had perhaps withdrawn), then made
for the Bosporus and drove the Persians out of Byzantium (Thuc. r.94):
this was anti-Persian action, not pro-Ionian. But, though he had laughed
at Persian grandeur after Plataea (Hdt. ix.82), power now went to his
head, and his arrogance and severity offended the allies. Thucydides is
convinced that he was also guilty of medism; but when recalled to Sparta
he was acquitted on that charge; he was not in Byzantium long enough to
send and receive the letters which Thucydides quotes, and there is no
reason why after his victories over the Persians he should at this point
have begun to collude with them (Thuc. 1.95, 128.4— 130). 4

Reports reached Sparta, and Pausanias was recalled; by the time
Dorcis had arrived as his successor, the leadership had been taken over
by the Athenians. Not only Sparta but the other Peloponnesians, and
Aegina, which could hardly be expected to submit to Athenian leader-
ship, 5 remained outside the new League. Athens had supported the
Ionians at the beginning (but only at the beginning) of their revolt
against Persia in 498;° she had opposed the Peloponnesians’ proposal to
transport the Ionians to Greece; and at the end of 479 she had led a
campaign against Sestos after the Peloponnesian contingents had
returned home (Hdt. tx. 1 14-21, cf. Thuc. 1.89.2). She had by far the
largest navy of any Greek state. There is thus nothing surprising in
Athenian leadership for the kind of war that could be expected.

According to Thucydides, the allies took the initiative and pressed the
leadership on Athens (1.95. 1—2, cf. 75.2), but other texts ascribe the
initiative to Athens (Hdt. vm.3.2; Ath. Pol. 23.4). It may not have been
clear who had first made the suggestion, but there must have been
willingness on both sides. The Ionian Revolt, with no strong leader, had
ended in disaster, while in mainland Greece Sparta had built up in the

3 Cf. pp. 97, 499, where a slightly later date is considered.

4 See especially Lippold 1965 (P46); Fornara 1966 (f 25) 265— 5; Lang 1967/8 (f 41); Rhodes 1970
(c 82) 387 — 90; Blamire 1970 (f 6) 296-8; Lazenby 1975 (f 44) 235-8.

5 Cf. CAH iv 2 339-40, 365-7. 6 Cf. CAH iv 2 482-3.

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36 3 - THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

Peloponnesian League a strong alliance which had not noticeably
diminished its members’ freedom, and the larger union under Spartan
leadership of nearly all the southern Greeks had succeeded in repelling
the Persian invasion. The prospect of a strong leader must have been
attractive to the eastern Greeks, and after the Ionian Revolt the chief
danger to be feared from Athens must have seemed not that she would
wield too much power over her allies but that she would not persevere in
what was their cause more than hers: the permanent nature of the alliance
(below) may have been seen as binding Athens rather than the allies. So
in 478/7 ( Ath . Pol. 23.5; Diod. xi.47 7 narrates it under 477/6) a new
alliance was formed.

For the organization of the League we are largely dependent on two
tantalizing chapters of Thucydides (1.96—7). The objective, clearly, was
in some sense to continue the war against Persia. Thucydides writes that
‘the pretext [proschema , in contrast with the aims which Athens came to
pursue 8 ] was to obtain revenge for what they had suffered by ravaging
the King’s land’ (1.96.1). Technically what was formed was a full
offensive and defensive alliance, intended to last until lumps of metal
rose from the bottom of the sea [Ath. Pol. 23.5), and although
Thucydides does not mention the freedom of the Greeks here he does so
elsewhere (m.10.3, vi.76.3-4): we have seen that the idea was mooted in
479, and we need not doubt that that was part of the reason for the
formation of a permanent alliance against the Persians. 9

How large the League is likely to have been at its foundation depends
partly on how much enthusiasm for war against Persia can be postulated
among the states of the Aegean, partly on how we interpret the word
‘Ionian’ in Hdt. ix.104, Thuc. 1.89.2, 95.1, and Ath. Pol. 23.4—5. Some
have wanted to take ‘Ionian’ strictly, as referring to the eastern states
which belonged to the Ionian strand of the Greek people and shared in
the Panionion, but the founder members must have included at any rate
the Aeolian states of Lesbos (Hdt. ix.106) and Dorian Byzantium.
Persia’s settlement after the Ionian Revolt had been mild (Hdt. vi.42— 3),
and it seems not to have been so strongly thought up to the time of the
Persian Wars as it came to be afterwards that Greeks and barbarians were
fundamentally different; but the eastern Greeks had not submitted to
Persia enthusiastically (cf. Hdt. 1. 1 4 1 , 15 2—3), and we may assume that as
long as the chances of success seemed good many will have welcomed a

7 On Diodorus' dates see p. 7.

8 Cf. Rawlings 1977 (e 66). French 1979 (e 29) denies the contrast, but it should be accepted.
Athens may not have had ulterior motives from the beginning, but she soon found ways of using the
League to her own advantage, and by the third quarter of the century was openly treating the
League as an Athenian empire.

9 Sealey 1966 (e 82) limits the original objective of the League to raiding for booty, but see
Jackson 1969 (e 37), Meiggs 462-4. The theme of retaliation is stressed by Raaflaub 1979 (e 65).

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THE FOUNDATION OF THE LEAGUE 37

continuing war against Persia. The League should have attracted a fair
number of members from the outset. 10

There was to be a treasury on Delos, and meetings of the allies were to
be held there (Thuc. 1.96.2); hence the modern name for the alliance, the
Delian League. Delos with its sanctuary of Apollo was important to the
Ionians in the strict sense of that term (Thuc. 111.104). Originally the
dominant influence there had been that of Naxos; an Athenian interest
had been shown by the sixth-century tyrant Pisistratus, who had
‘purified’ Delos by removing graves from the area of the sanctuary (Hdt.
1.64.2; Thuc. hi. 104. 1). 11 The use of the term ‘Ionians’ with reference to
a League whose members included eastern Greeks of all strands is thus
not just an accident of our sources: at its foundation the League was
represented as an Ionian league (which may have helped to justify
Athens’ leadership and make it acceptable to Sparta), and eastern Greeks
of other kinds were assimilated to the Ionians.

Some allies were to provide ships, others were to make payments in
cash (phoros , usually translated ‘tribute’). According to Thucydides the
Athenians decided which members should contribute in which way and
provided the financial officials [hellenotamiai , Greek treasurers), and the
total tribute was originally assessed at 460 talents, presumably per
annum (1.96). Athens provided the commanders of League expeditions,
and it should not surprise us that she also provided the League
treasurers : 12 if the alliance was to be effective, the leader needed to be able
to exercise her leadership, and to do so over all the allies, those which
paid tribute as well as those which sent their own ships. (The members
were partners in a full alliance, and it should not be supposed that a
tribute-payer could discharge its full obligation by making its annual
payment: the leader could require soldiers from all the allies, and was to
do so in Greece in the 450s. 13 ) The first assessment of contributions is
elsewhere attributed to the Athenian Aristides ( Ath . Pol. 23.5; Plut.
Arist. 24, cf. Thuc. v.18.5), and deciding the form of individual
contributions will no doubt have formed part of that exercise. It has
sometimes been thought that for the cities to which it applied Aristides
took over the assessment made by Artaphernes at the end of the Ionian
Revolt, but this implication should not be read into Hdt. vi.42, and it
appears that Artaphernes considered agricultural land only but the
Athenians took into account other forms of wealth. 14

,0 See, for a small League at the beginning, Walker, CAH v 1 42-4; Highby 1936 (e 35) 39-57;
Sealey 1966 (e 82) 243-4; cf. (fora strict interpretation of ‘Ionians’) Hammond 1967 (e 33)43-7 (= a
54, 315-21). A large League is preferred by Gomme, HCT 1 289-95, cf. 257, 271-2; ATL nr 194-
224; Meiggs 50-8. 11 Cf. CAH in 2 .}, 403.

12 But Woodhead 1959 (E95) suggested that at first the treasurers were appointed by the League.

13 Cf. p. 1 14.

14 Cf. Murray 1966 (a 93). Evans 1976 (a 35) argues that Aristides did use Artaphernes’ land
survey as his basis.

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3 - THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B.C.

The scale of the first assessment is notoriously problematic. Thucy-
dides gives a total of 460 talents, in language suggesting that that was the
amount contributed by payers of tribute; yet the evidence of the tribute
quota-lists indicates that in the late 450s, when the League had more
members, and more tribute-paying members, the total assessment was
only c. 500 talents. Similarly, Thuc. 11.13.3 states that the total tribute in
431 was 600 talents, but the quota-lists for the late 430s point to an
assessment of c. 430 talents. 15 Various solutions have been attempted. 16
The one assessment list which we know in detail, that of 425, is an
extremely optimistic list, 17 and it may be that Thucydides’ 460 talents is
derived from an optimistic list covering not only the states which did
join the League at the beginning but all which Athens hoped would join.
This list will have covered both tribute-payers and (perhaps at the rate of
one ship for 1 talent) ship-providers: only a large state could afford the
manpower to contribute several ships for a campaigning season every
year, and it has been estimated that more than half of the likely members
of the League could not regularly provide even one trireme, and only 1 5
per cent could regularly provide more than two. 18 Even if Thucydides’
figure is artificially high, the first assessment is problematic in another
way too. We do not know how large were the forces with which the
League campaigned, or for how long a season (Plut. Per. 1 1.4 refers to
sixty ships sent out for eight months, but we do not know of which
period, if any, this is true), but if Athens, though not assessed for tribute,
made a substantial contribution from her own resources, it is hard to
think that large sums would need to be spent from the tribute — and a
papyrus fragment may tell us that 5,000 talents had accumulated in the
League’s treasury by the middle of the century. 19 Later a proportion of
the tribute was given as an offering to Athena in Athens, and at first we
may assume that a proportion was given to Apollo on Delos: work on a
new temple there was begun in the second quarter of the fifth century,
and was abandoned about the middle of the century, when the League’s
treasury had been removed to Athens. 20

Thucydides says that the allies ‘at first were autonomous and deliber-
ated in common councils’ (1.97. 1); he goes on to mention cases in which

15 For the figures calculated from the tribute quota-lists see Meiggs 62—3 with 63 n. 1, 327; it is
arguable that the figure for the late 450s, which assumes that all members except Lesbos, Chios and
Samos had become tribute-payers, is slightly too low. Thucydides’ figures recur in Plut. Arist. 24.4,
but Diod. xi. 47. 1, xii. 40. 2, has different figures.

16 See Walker, CAH v 1 44—6; Gomme, HCT 1 273-9; in 236-43; Chambers 1958 (e 15);

Eddy 1968 (e 18); Meiggs 58—67; French 1972 (e 28); Unz 1985 (e 86).

17 1 G 1 3 71; see pp. 420-1.

18 Ruschenbusch 1983 (e 73-74). Eddy 1968 (e 18) suggested that 1 talent was reckoned as

equivalent to one ship; various questions concerning contributions of ships are discussed by
Blackman 1969 (e 10). 19 Cf. pp. 126 n. 26.

20 See Courby 1931 (1 54) 1-106, summarized by Bruneau and Ducat 1965 (i 32) 84-5 no. 13.

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THE FOUNDATION OF THE LEAGUE

Athens infringed the autonomy of the allies, and the councils reappear
only in a speech in which the Mytilenaeans say that at first Athens ‘led on
a basis of equality’, and refer to the many votes (poljpsephia) of the allies
and to the allies’ being ‘equal in votes’ ( isopsephoi ) to Athens (hi. 10.4—5,
1 1.4). Probably there was a single council, in which Athens had one vote
along with every other member; 21 and probably by the middle of the
century the council had ceased to meet. 22 Originally, we must assume,
Athens and the allies sent their forces and their representatives on the
council to Delos each spring, and the plan of campaign for the year was
decided then. Athens, as the leader providing the commander and the
largest number of ships, had a virtual veto, as she could hardly be made
to undertake a campaign which she did not want; but it would be
difficult for her to campaign with reluctant allies, and an ally with strong
objections might refuse to serve in a campaign of which she disap-
proved, as Corinth had deserted Sparta c. 506 (Hdt. v.75). 23 In 459 the
decision to fight in Egypt seems to have been taken neither in the
member cities nor at the regular council but by the commanders of the
forces which had gone to Cyprus (p.52). Probably it was not thought
necessary at the outset to stipulate that the members were to be
autonomous: the word a vrovofios is first attested in 441 (Soph. Ant. 821,
already metaphorical), and it has been suggested that it was coined with
reference to the kind of freedom which the members of the League found
to be increasingly at risk and became anxious to retain. 24

The Second Athenian League, founded in 378 to resist Spartan
imperialism, was in many respects differently organized. 25 It was based
on a purely defensive alliance. There was a council of allies in permanent
session in Athens, with its own presidential apparatus, which performed
a probouleutic function in parallel with the Athenian boule, while the
Athenian Assembly had the last word (but presumably could not commit
the allies against their will). Athens promised in general terms to respect
the freedom and autonomy of the allies, and in particular not to do
various things which she had come to do during the history of the Delian
League. One of those promises was not to collect phoros : before long
Athens did resort to collecting ‘contributions’ ( sjntaxeis ), but the sums
involved were not large, and the little evidence that we have suggests
that the assessment, collection and spending of the money were not left

21 Glotz 1958 (a 47) 1 1 5; Larsen 1940 (e 59); ATL in 227; Meiggs 460-2; Culham 1978 (e 16). But
some have argued that in the Delian League as in the Peloponnesian League a council of allies
excluding the leading state counterbalanced the leader: Walker, CAM v 1 40-1; Hammond 1967 (e
33) = a 54, 31 1-45; de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 298-307.

22 Cf. below, pp. 55-6. 23 Cf. CAH iv 2 308, 361.

24 Ostwald 1982 (a 95); Karavites 1982 (a 71). It was suggested in ATL in 228 that members’
autonomy was guaranteed at the foundation of the League, but Meiggs 46 doubts if the question
arose then.

25 Cf. CAM vi 2 , ch. 7. The most important text is IG n 2 43 = Tod, GHJ 123.

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3- THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO449 B. C.

entirely to Athens. In the Second League Athens did not only have to
live down the reputation of the Delian League: the danger from Sparta
was greater to Athens than to the League’s largely island members, and
in those circumstances it was Athens that needed to attract allies rather
than allies that needed a leader.

The anti-Persian alliance of 48 1 remained in force after the foundation
of the Delian League, at any rate until in the late 460s Athens sent help to
Sparta against the Messenians by virtue of this alliance but abandoned
the alliance when Sparta dismissed her troops (Thuc. 1. 1 02). 26 Otherwise
we hear nothing of this alliance except in late and probably fictitious
stories of its being invoked against Themistocles (Diod. xi. 5 5 . 5-7; Plut.
Them. 2 3. 6). 27 It has been argued that the Delian League was not an
independent alliance but an enterprise within the alliance of 48 1; 28 the
question is one which probably would not have interested contemporar-
ies. More drastically, it has been suggested that Thucydides’ account of
the League is seriously misleading, and that what really happened is that
Athens and a few strong island states banded together to attack medizing
Greeks in the Aegean, while Sparta was to attack medizers in mainland
Greece. 29 It is right to stress the difficulties in Thucydides’ account, and
the early appearance of Athenian self-interestedness in the history of the
League, 30 but we do not possess evidence of a quality and quantity that
would justify us in departing from Thucydides to that extent. 31

II. THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE

The chapters in Thucydides 1 cited above form part of his digression on
the Pentekontaetia , the period of almost fifty years between the Persian
Wars and the Peloponnesian War (1.89-1 1 8.z), placed there to justify his
claim that Sparta’s truest reason for going to war lay not in particular
instances of objectionable behaviour by Athens but in the power which
Athens had acquired and in Sparta’s fear of that power (1.23.5-6, cf. 88,
1 1 8. 2). 32 After dealing with the rebuilding of Athens’ walls after the
Persian Wars and with the foundation of the Delian League, he proceeds
to give a bald catalogue of events in Athens’ foreign relations down to
the Thirty Years’ Peace of 446/5 (98—1 1 5.1), followed by an account of
Athens’ war against Samos in 440—439 (1 15. 2—1 17), which is the only
near-contemporary narrative that we have of the Pentekontaetia ; in a
separate digression he tells stories of the downfall of Pausanias of Sparta
and Themistocles of Athens (128-38).

26 Cf. p. 1 10. 27 For attacks on Themistocles see pp. 65—7.

28 Giovannini and Gottlieb 1980 (e 32).

29 Robertson 1980 (e 69); cf. earlier Meyer 1963 (e 56).

30 Cf. below, pp. 46—8. 31 Cf. p. 6. 32 Cf. pp. 371—2.

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE

Another continuous narrative is provided by Diodorus Siculus (in his
annalistic account the years 478/7-451/0 are covered in xi. 38-92, and
450/49-432/ 1 in xii. 1— 37), and episodes in the history of the League are
mentioned in Plutarch’s lives of Cimon and Pericles. On the whole,
Diodorus and Plutarch write of episodes already known to us from
Thucydides, though in connexion with those episodes they often supply
details conflicting with his narrative or omitted from it. From the 450s
we begin to have contemporary evidence in epigraphic form, largely
from Athens. It seems to have been a policy of the democracy ushered in
by Ephialtes to inscribe public documents on stone, and we have a
number of decrees of the Assembly and other documents concerning the
Delian League; in particular, from 45 3 we have the annual tribute quota-
lists recording the one-sixtieth taken from the tribute paid by League
members as an offering to the treasury of Athena . 33 Unlike our later
literary sources, the epigraphic evidence informs us for the most part of
matters not dealt with by Thucydides: not only does it give us details of a
kind which we could not expect to find in a narrative history, but the
inscriptions contain pointers to difficulties in the League about the
middle of the century which Thucydides might have mentioned but
chose not to mention.

From this material we cannot write anything approaching a full
history of the League. Thucydides’ account is a selection of events,
presented in order to illustrate the growth of Athenian power. It is
highly likely that League forces fought in a number of campaigns of
which we know nothing whatever, but our ignorance makes it imposs-
ible to estimate how far Athens pursued the anti-Persian objectives for
which the League was founded and how far and how deliberately she
sought to further her own interests. We are not told how widely the
policies followed by Athens were supported by the Athenian citizens, or
how much support there was for Athens and the League within actual
and potential member states. We are not told how widespread were the
revolts and the stern responses by Athens of which some instances are
reported (though for the years whose quota-lists are well preserved we
have fairly clear knowledge of which states paid tribute and which did
not).

Thucydides’ catalogue of events begins with the capture from the
Persians of Ei'on, at the mouth of the Strymon: Cimon of Athens was in
command, the inhabitants (non-Greek) were enslaved, and (stated only
by Plutarch, but there is no reason to doubt it) Athenian settlers were
sent there (Thuc. 1.98.1, cf. Hdt. vn.107, Plut. Cim. 7—8.2). A scholiast
on Aeschines (11.31) mentions the destruction of an Athenian force at

33 Cf. p. 1 24, and on documents concerning the League, pp. 54 - 6 . For an inscription of the 460s
see p. 46.

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3. THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

Nine Ways, a short distance up the Strymon, after the capture of Eion:
presumably the Athenians were trying to found another colony there.
The next event is the capture of the Aegean island of Scyros (again
inhabited by non-Greeks), the enslavement of its inhabitants, and the
foundation of another Athenian settlement (Thuc. 1.98.2). We are told
by later writers, but not by Thucydides, that in response to a Delphic
oracle Cimon found the skeleton of the Athenian hero Theseus on
Scyros and took it back to Athens (Plut. Thes. 36.1—3, Cim. 8.3—7; Paus.
1. 17.6; cf. Ath. Pol. fr. 4 Kenyon). Next came a war against Carystus, at
the south-east end of Euboea, which, having been sacked by the Persians
in 490, had supported them in 480 (Hdt. vi.99.2, vm.66.2): this ended
with the Carystians’ coming to terms and joining the League (Thuc.
1.98.3, cf. Hdt. rx.105). Then Naxos, one of the largest island states,
revolted and was blockaded and reduced: Thucydides comments that
‘this was the first allied state to be [metaphorically] enslaved contrary to
what had been established, but afterwards it happened to the others one
by one’ (1.98.4).

Depriving the Persians of their European outpost at Eion was clearly
a proper act for the Delian League; but the Athenian colony there, and
the attempted colony at Nine Ways (finally established as Amphipolis, in
437/6), would primarily benefit Athens. Nine Ways was at an important
crossing of routes, and the area had gold and silver deposits and suitable
timber for shipbuilding. It is doubtful if the attack on Scyros was
justified as an anti-Persian measure: one Scyrian had helped the Persian
navy to locate and mark a dangerous reef in 480 (Hdt. viii. 183.3), but
that is Herodotus’ only reference to Scyros. The removal of barbarian
pirates could be represented as generally advantageous; but the gain for
Athens was clear, not only in the finding of what could be revered as
Theseus’ skeleton but also in the acquisition of an island which occupied
an important position on the route from the Hellespont to Athens and
which may itself have had corn to export. Presumably the settlers were
all Athenian: in the fourth century Athens was to claim Scyros as one of
her rightful possessions (e.g. Andoc. 111.12). Yet it is likely that the
members of the League both approved and joined in the campaigns
against Eion and Scyros (though ‘the Athenians’ are to be understood as
the subject of the verbs in Thuc. 1.98). Carystus was a fair target for an
anti-Persian League; already in the autumn of 480 the patriotic Greeks
had extorted money from it and had ravaged its land (Hdt. vm.ii2,
1 2 1 . 1 ). However, it like Scyros lay close to the route from the Hellespont
to Athens, and so Athens in particular would benefit from a compliant
Carystus. We are not told why Naxos revolted. Technically it was not
entitled to withdraw from what had been founded as a permanent
alliance; it was to have been the Persians’ first foothold in the Cyclades at

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE

the beginning of the century, and was their first conquest in the Cyclades
in 490 (Hdt. v. 28-34, vi. 96), and it could reasonably be claimed that the
League could not afford to let Naxos go. The ‘enslavement’ of Naxos
was probably similar to the subsequent treatment of Thasos: Naxos will
have been forced to remain in the League against its will, to demolish its
city wall, to surrender its warships (presumably, to Athens), and to pay
an indemnity and tribute; we need not suppose that Athenian interfer-
ence went further than that. 34

There is no doubt about the anti-Persian nature of the next event
mentioned by Thucydides, the battle of the river Eurymedon. Probably,
in previous campaigns, the League had been winning over coastal cities
as far as Pamphylia (on the south side of Asia Minor); when the Persians
began assembling a large fleet, Cimon went with Athenian and allied
ships (specially designed to carry a larger number of hoplites than usual),
forced Phaselis to join the League, and continued east to the Eury-
medon, where he destroyed the Persians’ fleet in the mouth of the river
and then landed and sacked their camp; he then proceeded further east to
defeat Persian reinforcements coming from Cyprus. This was a major
campaign, with two hundred Persian ships destroyed according to
Thucydides, and more according to later writers (Thuc. 1. 100.1; details
added by Diod. xi. 60. 3-62, with battles first off Cyprus and then at the
Eurymedon on the same day, and by Plut. C'tm. 1 2-1 3). If the League had
been recruiting members as far away as Pamphylia, and was prepared to
send large forces to fight against Persia at the Eurymedon, we should
expect it to be well established in the Aegean.

We should also expect a sequel to the victory at the Eurymedon.
Cyprus is not far beyond the river. Greeks had settled there, dominating
but not displacing the other inhabitants, at the end of the Mycenaean
period; in the Archaic period Cyprus had looked south and east rather
than north and west, and she had submitted to Persia c. 545, but by the
end of the sixth century Greek culture was in favour with those who
objected to Persian rule. Cyprus joined in the Ionian Revolt against
Persia in the 490s, but was obliged to contribute to Xerxes’ invasion of
Greece in 480. 35 Pausanias had begun the campaign of 478 there, but had
then turned his attention to Byzantium, and we must assume that none of
the states of Cyprus joined the Delian League at its foundation. After the
battle of the Eurymedon we should expect an attempt to recover Cyprus
for the Greek world, and later events were to show that Athens did not
forget Cyprus, but at this point the attempt seems not to have been made.

34 Contra Ostwald 1982 (a 95) 38-9, supposing that Naxos ‘lost control over her internal
administration’. Blackman 1969 (e 10) 199-200 leaves open the possibility that Naxos was allowed
to retain her ships.

35 Cf. CAH ii 3 . 2 , ch. 2 zb, iri 2 .i, ch. 12, ni 2 -3, ch. 36 r, iv 2 48 (Hdt. vii.90), 483-4; and, on Cyprus
both before and during the fifth century, Meiggs 477-86.

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3. THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

Given that the date of the battle is uncertain and that Thucydides’
narrative is highly selective, we can not be sure why the victory was not
immediately followed up.

For Thucydides’ next episode we return to the Aegean, and to Athens’
pursuit of her own advantage. The island of Thasos revolted, on account
of a dispute over trading posts and mines on the Thracian mainland,
which were controlled by Thasos but coveted by Athens. The Athenians
won a sea battle and landed on the island, and the large number of ten
thousand Athenian and allied settlers were sent to Nine Ways (but were
annihilated by the Thracians in a battle at Drabescus, to the north east).
The Thasians appealed to Sparta, and Thucydides believes that the
Spartans secretly promised to distract Athens by invading Attica, but
Sparta herself was distracted by the great earthquake and the Helot
Revolt which followed it, and no invasion of Attica took place. 36 Sparta
and Athens had not yet quarrelled, and Sparta was shortly to ask for
Athenian help against the helots; Thasos may have appealed to Sparta,
but it is unlikely that Sparta intended to respond. Thasos was besieged,
and in the third year came to terms with Athens: she was to demolish her
city wall, surrender her warships and mainland possessions, presumably
to Athens, and pay an indemnity and tribute (Thuc. 1.100.2 — ioi). The
colony at Nine Ways was not purely Athenian, and Athens presumably
claimed that Thasos was monopolizing resources in barbarian territory
from which all the League should benefit, but other members too had a
peraia which might be threatened by such a doctrine, and this episode
looks more like an extension of Athens’ power than a furthering of the
Leagues’s objectives.

‘In the third year’ (1. 10 1.3) is Thucydides’ first indication of time since
the beginning of his account of the Pentekontaetia. Diodorus groups all
the events from Ei'on to the Eurymedon under 470/69, and mentions
Thasos under 464/3 (xi.60-2, 70.1, 5). The scholiast on Aeschines dates
to the archonship in Athens of Phaidon (476/5) the Athenian defeat
which followed the capture of Ei'on. Plutarch ( Tbes . 36.1) dates to the
same year the oracle in response to which Cimon brought back the bones
of Theseus from Scyros; in Cim. 8, §§5—7 Plutarch deals with the capture
of Scyros, and in §§7—9 reports that the archon Apsephion (469/8) invited

36 There seem to have been links of xenia between Sparta and Thasos. A man called Pausanias son
of Alexarchus was a tbeoros in Thasos in the 440s (Salviat 1979 (f 62) iv. 25 in the text between pages
1 16 and 1 17), and should have been bom about the time of Pausanias’ Aegean command of 478. A
man called Liches son of Arcesileos was an archon in Thasos in 398/7 (Pouilloux 1954 (f 5 8) 266-70
no. 29.17; date, Pouilloux and Salviat 1984 (f 59) 257-8, and 1983 (c 79) 386): he is more probably a
Thasian whose family has taken over two Spartan names (Pouilloux 1954, loc. cit.\ Cartledge 1984 (f
15)) than the well-known Spartan Lichas, geron in 420 (Thuc. v.50.4 with Xen. Hell. 111.2.21), still
alive in 398/7 {pace Thuc. vm.84.5) an ^ appointed archon in Thasos (Pouilloux and Salviat 1983 (c
79))-

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE

Cimon and his fellow generals to supplant the regular judges of the
tragedies performed at the Dionysia. For the coercion of Carystus there
is no chronological evidence. For the revolt of Naxos there is none
unless we take seriously a story in Thucydides’ digression on Themisto-
cles: in his flight across the Aegean he passed Naxos while the Athenians
were blockading it (i.i 37.2). If this is true, and if the Persian king whom
Themistocles met was Artaxerxes {1. 137.3), who succeeded Xerxes in
465, the revolt of Naxos can hardly be earlier than c. 466; but it is by no
means certain that Thucydides’ story should be accepted. 37 There is no
direct evidence to date the battle of the Eurymedon.

The war against Thasos occupied three years (Thuc. 1.101.3), proba-
bly three archontic years. Thucydides (rv.102.3) dates the colony whose
settlers were destroyed at Drabescus thirty-two years after the failure of
Aristagoras in Thrace (Hdt. v. 1 24-6), and the successful foundations of
Amphipolis in the twenty-ninth year after the unsuccessful colony; the
Aeschines scholiast dates the unsuccessful colony to the archonship of
Lysicrates (45 3/2) and the successful to 437/6 (the latter confirmed by a
date-table entry in Diod. xn.32.3). The scholiast can be reconciled with
Thucydides if we suppose that our text gives the wrong name beginning
Lysi — : the archon of 465/4, twenty-nine years by inclusive counting
from 437/6, was Lysitheus (and 496/5, the date obtained if we count
inclusively again, is an acceptable date for Aristagoras’ failure 38 ). The
war against Thasos may therefore be dated 465/4-463/2, and this is
compatible with what is known of Cimon’s subsequent career.

It used to be normal to assign Ei'on and Scyros to 476 and 475, and
Carystus and Naxos to the later 470s. Plutarch did not necessarily have
evidence for, or even believe in, a connexion between the capture of
Scyros and Cimon’s judging the tragedies, and it has been suggested that
judging the tragedies may have been a reward for victory at the
Eurymedon in 469. 39 More recently, however, later dates have been
canvassed for some or all of these episodes. According to Diod. xi. 5 3. 1
the archon of 469/8 was not Apsephion but Phaidon or Phaion, and
Diodorus might have placed the sequence of events beginning with Ei'on
in 470/69 because the capture of Ei'on belonged to that year; Plutarch
might have had evidence connecting the judging of the tragedies with
the capture of Scyros and the recovery of Theseus’ skeleton; Thucydides
might be correct in stating that Themistocles passed Naxos while the

» a. P . 66.

38 The most striking feature of Badian 1 98 8 (b i ) is the argument that the scholiast’s date is correct
and the disaster at Drabescus occurred in 453/2, long after the foundation of the colony.

39 See the tables of dates in Gomme, HCT 1 394-6, ATL 111 175-9. The suggestion about
Cimon’s judging of the tragedies was first made by Jacoby 1947 (c 56) 3 n. 1 = c 58, 147 n. 17.

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3. THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

Athenians were blockading it . 40 Nevertheless, the old orthodoxy is still
to be preferred. Chronological arguments which rely on Diodorus’
narrative dates are fragile; and it is hard to believe that Athens would
have waited many years to take Ei'on from the Persians, to occupy Scyros
and to assert herself against Carystus, or that within months of facing the
revolt of Naxos she should have felt safe enough in the Aegean to take
large forces to the Eurymedon.

Three episodes not included in Thucydides’ summary have to be fitted
in. He tells us later that Pausanias, after his recall to Sparta in 478,
returned to Byzantium, was dislodged by the Athenians and moved to
Colonae, and from there was again recalled to Sparta (1. 1 28.3, 1 3 1). Some
have placed this before the capture of Ei'on, since a fragment of Ephorus
or a writer using him ( FGrH 70 f 191.6) and Diodorus (xi.60.2) take
Cimon and the fleet to Ei'on from Byzantium, 41 but this may be simply
because in Diodorus at least (xi.44.7) Byzantium is where the fleet was
last mentioned, under the command of Pausanias in 478. A passage in
Justin, defective at least in that it makes Pausanias the founder of
Byzantium, states that he controlled it for seven years (ix.1.3): we may
wonder why Athens should have tolerated his presence there for so long,
but since his downfall is more easily placed in the 460s we should accept
the statement and date his expulsion c. 470. 42

Plutarch (C». 14.1) mentions a campaign of Cimon against Persians
and Thracians in the Chersonese, between the Eurymedon and the
Thasian war, and this is confirmed by a casualty list which records deaths
both in the Hellespont and on Thasos, presumably in the same
campaigning year ( Agora xvii 1). The Chersonese campaign must
therefore be dated immediately before the war against Thasos, and the
fact that opposition to the League occurred there so late makes a long
occupation of Byzantium by Pausanias less implausible, in Cim. 13.4
Plutarch mentions that on separate occasions Pericles and Ephialtes
sailed beyond the Chelidonian Islands (south of Phaselis) and met no
resistance. Pericles’ voyage may be that of 440 (Thuc. 1.1 16.3), but that of
Ephialtes at any rate must be placed between the battle of the Euryme-
don and his murder at the end of the 460s.

As stated above, it is highly likely that during these years the League
engaged in activity against the Persians of which we know nothing at all.

40 All these events from Ei'on onwards are down-dated by Smart 1 967 (e 84); some but not all are
down-dated by Meiggs 80-3, Levy 1976 (d 48) 277-9, Milton 1979 (b 9). For a variant on the low
chronology, see Unz 1986 (b 16) 69-73, 1 am not persuaded by Badian 1987 (e 3) 2—8 that in Thuc. 1.
100. 1 ficra ravra kcli means that the siege of Naxos and the battle of the Eurymedon were
contemporaneous. 41 E.g. Gomme, HCT 1 399—400; ATL nr 158-60.

42 White 1964 (f 71) argued for a late date from the likely age of Pausanias and the number of his
sons; see also Rhodes 1970 (c 82) 396-7; Badian 1988 (b i ) 300—4; Chronological Notes below, p.
499. For the end of Pausanias’ career see pp. ioo-i.

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE

We do know that there was fighting against Persia on various occasions
until c. 450 (below), and that by then Persia had been driven so far from
the Aegean that a peace treaty either was imposed on her or later could be
believed to have been imposed on her. 43 Those who joined the League as
an anti-Persian organization could not complain that Athens was failing
to pursue the League’s objectives. But, appropriately for his own
purpose, the episodes chosen for inclusion in Thucydides’ catalogue can
all be seen as illustrating the growth of Athenian power. Eton became an
Athenian colony, and gave Athens access to the area where Amphipolis
was eventually to be founded; Scyros became an Athenian colony.
Carystus was forced to join the League against its will; Naxos was forced
to remain in the League against its will. The Eurymedon was a famous
victory for the League, but more specifically for Athens. Athens fought
against and subdued Thasos to take from it territory which Athens
coveted.

This is not to say that Thucydides is wrong to represent Athens’
foundation of the Delian League as an innocent matter, the acceptance of
an invitation from the eastern Greeks to be their leader in a continuing
war against Persia: we need not suppose that Athens had ulterior
motives in accepting the invitation, or enforced her will on reluctant
allies from the beginning. 44 But from the earliest years, as the League’s
policy developed, Athens found herself presented with opportunities to
further her own interests, and, not necessarily of set purpose, she took
those opportunities: the response to one situation tended to set the
pattern for responses to later situations.

According to Thucydides, it was largely by the defections of the allies
that Athens was compelled to become more despotic: as leader she
insisted on the allies’ obligations, the allies hated her for it, and so she
came to fear the consequences of not retaining a tight control (1.75—7,
97.1, 11.63.1—2). After the revolt of Naxos he inserts a chapter on the
tightening of Athenian control within the League (1.99): revolt often
grew out of default in the provision of tribute, ships and men, since the
allies did not take kindly to Athens’ punctilious exaction of what was due
from them (cf. vi.76.3, also Hdt. vi.i 1-12, on the Ionians in the 490s);
Athens increasingly became a superior rather than a leader of equals, and
the allies encouraged this development by deciding that it would be less
burdensome to pay tribute than to take part in campaigns; thus the
Athenian fleet grew at the allies’ expense, and the allies were not trained

43 Cf. pp. 1 21-7.

44 Cf. above, pp. 36 with n. 8, 40 with n. 29. Pride in Athenian achievements, not only against the
Persians but also against Greeks, is attested by the names which some men of this generation gave to
their sons: Eurymedon (Thuc. 111.80.2, etc.; notice also the vase inscribed EvpupeSov cip.i KvpaSe
cctt etca, published by Schauenberg 1975 (1 146)), but also Carystonicus and Naxiades (M-L 48.27,
79)-

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3 - THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

or equipped to resist when Athens used force against them. Certainly it
will have been less arduous for a small state to pay tribute than to provide
and man even one ship fora long campaign regularly each summer; 45 and
since from the beginning all executive power lay with Athens we may
accept Thucydides’ implication that ships built and manned as a charge
on the tribute became Athenian ships. An ally which did not provide its
own ships and men could not withdraw from a campaign of which it
disapproved; even if it retained one or two warships it would have little
practice in fighting, on sea or on land, and so would easily be dealt with
when dissatisfaction reached the point of withholding tribute.

Diodorus places his comment on the changing nature of the League
after the coercion of Thasos and Aegina (xi.70.3— 4): the Athenians no
longer treated the allies reasonably, but ruled forcibly and arrogantly;
most of the allies, unable to bear this, began to discuss revolt amongst
themselves, and some despised the League Council and ‘took to
organizing themselves individually’ (freer’ ISCav erarTovro, by which he
may mean that they withdrew from the League). In Thuc. hi. 10-1 1 the
Mytilenaeans complain that the structure of the Council enabled Athens
to get her own way, and she picked off the allies one by one, beginning
[which is not true] with the weakest. Since Athens with the allies
remaining loyal to her controlled the sea, and most members were island
states or coastal states with easier communications by sea than by land,
concerted revolt by a number of allies would have been hard to organize,
and there is no evidence that it occurred.

In its early years, then, the Delian League was both a body fighting
against Persia on behalf of the Greeks and a body through which Athens
found opportunities to extend her own power: the Thasian war is the
most blatant instance mentioned by Thucydides of Athens’ not merely
furthering her own interests but doing so at the expense of one of her
allies.

According to Thucydides the Spartans were happy at the formation of
the new League under Athenian leadership, since they distrusted the
influence of the wider world on Spartan commanders, and regarded the
Athenians as competent to take the lead and friendly to themselves. Later
texts disagree. The Athenaion Politeia, if its text is neither emended nor
given an unnatural sense to obtain agreement with Thucydides, states
that Athens’ taking the lead at sea was contrary to Sparta’s will (23.2).
Diodorus (xi.50) has a debate in which the Spartans consider going to
war to recover the lead, and it seems likely that they will decide for war,
but unexpectedly a member of the gerousia called Hetoemaridas obtains

45 Cf. above, p. 38 with n. 18. The point was made earlier, in more general terms, by Finley 1978
(e 25) 1 10— 14.

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AMBITIONS OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRATS

majority support for his arguments on the other side. Certainly no such
war took place. It might be surprising if details of a debate which did not
issue in action leaked out of secretive Sparta, and another contributor to
this volume regards the story as an invention. 46 The Athenaion PoJiieia is
not bound to have agreed with Thucydides, and there may well have
been some Spartans who had supported Pausanias and who wanted
Sparta to remain involved in Aegean affairs; but after the Persian Wars
Sparta had trouble not only with her own commanders abroad but with
her neighbours in the Peloponnese, 47 and, as long as Athens’ expansion
took place in the Aegean and under the command of the pro-Spartan
Cimon, many may have thought that there was no cause for alarm.
Spartan cooperation with Athens led to the condemnation of Themisto-
cles (Thuc. 1. 1 3 5 .2— 3); 48 whatever Thasos may have hoped, Sparta did
not interfere with her reduction by Athens; and in 462/1 Cimon took
Athenian hoplites to help Sparta against the Messenians (below).
Thucydides’ judgement clearly reflects the prevailing, if not the univer-
sal, opinion in Sparta.

III. THE AMBITIONS OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRATS

Friendship between Sparta and Athens came to an end as a result of the
Messenian War which followed the great earthquake of 464: Sparta
asked for help from her allies including Athens; Cimon wanted to send
help but Ephialtes did not (Plut. Cim. 16.9—10); Cimon had his way and
went to the Peloponnese, with four thousand hoplites (Ar. Lys. 1138-
44); but the Spartans, afraid of the daring and radicalism of the
Athenians, suspected that they would be persuaded by the rebels to take
radical action, and so claimed that they had no further need of the
Athenians and sent them home. Athens then abandoned the alliance of
481 with Sparta, and instead made alliances with Argos and Thessaly,
enemies of Sparta (Thuc. 1.101.2— 102). It is argued in another chapter
that what aroused the Spartans’ fear was the political success of the anti-
Spartan Ephialtes in Athens in Cimon’s absence: the Athenian soldiers,
had they stayed, might have received new orders to support the rebels
against Sparta , 49 The era of peaceful coexistence between Athens and
Sparta was at an end, and Athens was now prepared to challenge Sparta’s
dominant position on the Greek mainland. In Greece Athens’ new
alliances, and the desire to conquer Aegina at last, drew her into the First
Peloponnesian War; but at the same time she continued the fighting
against Persia for which the Delian League had been founded, now
prosecuting the war outside the Aegean, and she also began to look to

46 Cf. p. 100. 47 Cf. pp. loifF. 48 Cf. p. 65. 49 Cf. p. 69.

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50 3- THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

the Greeks in Italy and Sicily, where previously she had not had any
direct involvement.

Athens’ expansion on the mainland, and her conquest of Aegina, are
discussed elsewhere in this volume. 50 Aegina was treated in the same way
as Naxos and Thasos: she had to demolish her walls and surrender her
warships, and was incorporated in the League as a tribute-paying
member (Thuc. 1.108.4); ln 43 2 she was to complain that Athens was
denying her the autonomy promised either in the treaty of incorporation
or in the Thirty Years’ Peace of 446/5, but Thucydides gives no details
(1.67.2 etc.). 51 From the first of the quota-lists she is found paying tribute
at the high rate of 30 talents a year. The members of the League were full
allies of Athens, and she used League forces not only against Aegina
(1.105 .2) but also on the mainland (1.107.5; cf. the reference to Ionians in
M— L 36, Paus. v.10.4). It has normally been assumed that her mainland
acquisitions were not enrolled in the League but were made directly
subject to Athens; but the possibility has been suggested that Boeotian
Orchomenus is to be restored in the quota-list of 45 2. 52

War against the Persians continued. A fleet of two hundred Athenian
and allied ships was sent to Cyprus (mentioned in parenthesis, Thuc.
r. 104.2). In spite of the victory at the Eurymedon, Cyprus had still not
been added to the Delian League. Ephialtes had sailed beyond the
Chelidonian Islands at some time in the 460s, but we cannot infer another
expedition of Cimon to Cyprus in 462 from Plut. Cim. 1 5. 2. 53 However,
again Cyprus had to be left for future attention.

This force in Cyprus received an appeal for help from the Libyan king
Inaros, who had incited Egypt to revolt against Persia, and it was
decided to help. Egypt was not half-Greek, as Cyprus was, but Greeks
had fought for Egyptian kings and had settled in Egypt in the seventh
and sixth centuries, and many Greeks still lived there in the fifth
century; 54 campaigning for the Egyptians could thus be represented as a
continuation of the war against Persia for which the League had been
founded, and as an act of Greek solidarity. The fact that Egypt had
abundant crops of corn may also have appealed both to Athens and to
some other members. So the League’s forces moved on from Cyprus to
Egypt, where they gained control of the Nile delta and the greater part of
the city of Memphis, and laid siege to the remaining part (Thuc. 1. 104).

The Persians, like the Thasians earlier, tried to induce the Spartans to

50 Cf. pp. 1 1 i-i 6. 51 Cf. p. 376.

52 IG i 3 260. ix.9, with Lewis 1981 (e 41) 77 n. 43, and ad loc. See also p. 1 16 n. 72.

53 As was argued by Barns 195 3-4 (e 5). Sec p. 69.

54 Cf. CAH hi 2 . 3, ch. 3 6b. Athens’ Egyptian campaign of the 450s is treated briefly in an
Egyptian context in CAH iv 2 276.

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AMBITIONS OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRATS

distract Athens by invading Attica, but again Sparta did not act . 55 In due
course the Persians sent a large army under Megabyxus to Egypt. The
Egyptians and the Greeks were driven out of Memphis, and eventually
were surrounded in Prosopitis, an island in the south of the delta
bounded by two branches of the river and a canal. There they were
besieged for eighteen months, until the Persians drained the canal and
crossed to the island. ‘Thus the Greeks’ cause was ruined, after six years
of war: a few of the many who had gone escaped through Libya to
Cyrene, but the majority perished.’ Fifty further ships from Athens and
the League arrived in time to join in the disaster (1.109— 10).

Thucydides continues not to give precise indications of chronology;
he does not use temporal expressions when moving from one field of
activity to another, and it is reasonable to suppose that he has not
presented each separate incident in chronological order but that the
Egyptian episode has been organized in two blocks of narrative for
tidiness’ sake and these events may have overlapped with those reported
from Greece. 56 The Thirty Years’ Peace was made in 446/5, and the five-
year truce between Athens and the Peloponnesians in 451; three years
without attested activity separated the truce from the last events which
Thucydides mentions of the fighting in Greece (1. 1 1 2. i). 57 The treasury
of the League had been moved from Delos to Athens by the spring of 45 3
(below); two inscriptions confirm that the Samians took part in the
Egyptian campaign, 58 and they are said to have proposed the moving of
the treasury (Plut. Arist. 25.5): it is reasonable to suppose that the
treasury was moved in fear of Persian reprisals, 59 and to date the end of
the Egyptian campaign to 454. We cannot be sure in what kind of year
the six years are reckoned, but probably the campaign began in 459 (see
also pp. 500—1).

An Athenian casualty list (M-L 33) lists men who died in ‘the war’ in
Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, Halieis, Aegina and Megara ‘in the same

55 Some connect with the Persian envoy Megabazus one Arthmius of Zelea, who was believed in
the fourth century to be an Athenian proxenos whom the Athenians outlawed for bringing Persian
gold to the Peloponnese (Dem. ix.41-3, xix.271; Aeschin. 111.258; Dinarch. 11.24— 5; cf. Craterus
FCrH 342 f 14 (decree ofCimon), Plut. Them. 6.4, Aristid. 11.392 Dindorf(decreeof Themistocles)).
Arthmius’ mission is placed here by Busolt 1893-1904 (a 12) n 2 . 653 n.3, m.i. 328 n. 1; earlier by
Meiggs 508-12; it is rejected as a fourth-century fiction by Habicht 1961 (c 40) 23—5.

54 Cf. the discussion of his dating of the Third Messenian War, p. 500. 57 Cf. p. 120.

58 M— L 34 has long been known. Dunst 1972 (c 129) 153—5 no. xxiv publishes an inscription
recording Inaros’ award of a prize to Lcocritus of Samos, ‘in command of the allies’ sailors*.

w Plut. Per. 12.1 says that Pericles was accused of taking over the monies of the Greeks from
Delos (an accusation which may be authentic despite the weaknesses of these chapters of the Pericles
discussed by Andrewes 1978 (d 3) 1-5), and it is almost universally accepted that the treasury was
moved immediately before the publication of the first quota-list in Athens, in 453. However,
arguments have been advanced for a transfer in Aristides’ lifetime by Pritchett 1969 (e 63) (cf. Plut.
Arist. 25.3), and for a transfer in the late 460s by Robertson 1980 (e 69) 1 1 2-19 (cf. Just. 111.6.1-4).

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5 2 3' THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

year’, probably a year which includes all of the summer of 459: the
campaign against Persia in the Levant and the campaign in Greece are
being regarded as part of one and the same war. The last three items are
given in what appears from Thucydides to be chronological order. 60
Probably the first three items are in chronological order too: there was
fighting in Cyprus at the beginning of the season; then the forces were
transferred to Egypt, and after they had established themselves there a
raid was made on Phoenicia (this is not mentioned in any of our literary
sources). 61

Diodorus, mentioning neither Cyprus nor the League, has the
Egyptian campaign undertaken after Inaros sent envoys to Athens
(xi.71.4— 6). From Thucydides and the inscription it appears that the
move from Cyprus to Egypt was made at short notice: this suggests that
Inaros’ approach may have been made not to Athens but to the forces in
Cyprus, and that the initial decision to respond may have been taken on
the spot by the commander of the fleet (Ctesias, FGrH 688 f 14.36, gives
his name as Charitimides, not otherwise attested); he will no doubt have
consulted the leaders of the allied contingents.

Thucydides suggests that all 250 ships sent to Egypt and their crews
were involved in the final disaster, in which case this was indeed a major
setback. Diodorus has 300 ships voted and 200 sent (xi.71.5, 74.3); the
Egyptians and Athenians defeat a first Persian expedition of 300,000
under Achaemenes (74.1—4); then Artabazus and Megabyxus take

300.000 soldiers and 300 ships (75.1-2, 77.1: there is no sign of ships in
Thuc. 1. 109.3-4); and when the Egyptians surrender the Athenians burn
their ships but themselves withdraw under a truce (77.3—5); reinforce-
ments are not mentioned. In the epitome of Ctesias ( FGrH 688 f 14.36-
9) the Greeks’ original force comprises only 40 ships; Achaemenides has

400.000 soldiers (of whom 300,000 survive their defeat) and 80 ships;
Megabyxus takes 200,000 soldiers and 300 ships; 6,000 Greeks survive
and are taken to Persia; again there is no mention of Greek reinforce-
ments. Those who find it hard to believe in a disaster on the scale implied
by Thucydides have been tempted by Ctesias’ forty ships to believe
either that on that point he is right and Thucydides is wrong or that after
the initial victory most of the Greek ships were withdrawn. 62 There may
well be some authentic material behind the Ctesias epitome and Diodo-
rus, but the 6,000 survivors later in the epitome point to more than forty
ships, and on this point Diodorus is closer to Thucydides. The raid on
Phoenicia shows that all the ships did not stay in Egypt all the time, but

60 Cf. p. 1 1 2. 61 See CAH iv 2 144.

62 See, against Thucydides, Westlake 1950 (e 92), Salmon 1965 (e 77) 1 5 1 — 8; for Thucydides,
Libourel 1971 (e 43), Meiggs 473-6.

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AMBITIONS OF THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRATS

there is no reason to think that Thucydides’ account is fundamentally
wrong.

While they were fighting against the Persians in the Levant and
against their fellow Greeks at home, the Athenians also began to take an
interest in the West. An inscription whose lettering points to a date
before c. 445 s3 records an alliance between Athens and Egesta, an
Elymian (non-Greek, but hellenized) city in the north west of Sicily ( 1 G
1 3 11): the prescript of the decree included the name of the Athenian
archon, but the only letters which can safely be deciphered are the last
two, ON. Editors used to date this 45 4/ 3 , on the inadequate grounds that
Diod. xi. 86. 2 mentions under that year a war in Sicily in which Egesta
was involved; 64 there was another archon whose name has the right
ending in 458/7, and that provides a better context for this further
extension of Athens’ interests than the time when the Egyptian
campaign ended in failure and the fighting in Greece came to a halt. 65
Why Athens should have made her first alliance with a western city at
this time we do not know: possibly it was Egesta which made the
approach to Athens, and once more Athens accepted an invitation.

Six years of fighting in two areas had brought mixed results. In
Greece, Aegina was a gain kept until the end of the League, but Athens’
other acquisitions, extensive and impressive though they seemed, were
more than she had the strength to retain against concerted opposition,
and most of them were to be lost in 446. In Egypt a promising start led to
a disastrous conclusion, when the Persians sent into Egypt forces which
were too much for Athens and the allies. The alliance with Egesta was to
be followed by the establishment of other Athenian contacts with the
West, and ultimately by the disastrous Sicilian Expedition of 415—413,
which again if it had succeeded in the short term would not have brought
gains which could be retained permanently. Athens could dominate the

w Although this text was dated by an archon’s name, it did not become norma) Athenian practice
to date decrees in that way until c. 420. The authors of ATL , in working on inscriptions concerning
the League, accepted what was already standard doctine, that the forms of beta , rbo , sigma and phi
used in Athenian inscriptions changed about the middle of the fifth century: this doctrine has been
subjected to a sustained attack by H.B. Mattingly, in a long series of articles beginning with e 44, e
45, e 47, who brings down to about the 420s many texts which orthodoxy places about 450; but
study of texts which are securely dated, by Meiggs 1966 (c 145), Walbank 1974 (c 170, revised in
1978(0 1 71)); cf. Meritt and Wade-Gery 1962 and 1965(0 1 52), shows that texts which can be dated
independently support the orthodox doctrine. The argument has extended from epigraphic to
linguistic phenomena, with some support for later dates claimed by Henry 1978 (c 154). I shall
assume that the orthodox doctrine is correct, but shall indicate when a date depends on the doctrine.

64 See p. 1 59 n. 10.

ha)f$pov the archon of 45 8/7, was read by Raubitschck 1944(0 16 1) ion. j ; happ)ov is restored in
M-L 57; in IG i 3 Woodhead supports ba\^\p\ov in his commentary but leaves the text unrestored.
’Avr]i<f>6v y the archon of 418/17, was read by Mattingly 196} (e 47) 267-70; this dating has been
accepted by Smart 1972 (e 85), by Wick 1975 (c 176) and 1981 (c 177), and, with new photographs.
Chambers, Gallucci and Spanos, ZPE 8} (1990) 58-65.

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3- THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B.C.

Aegean even against opposition, because the sea kept separate medium-
to-small states apart, and as long as she kept the naval power in her own
hands a large force could not be put together against her; but in the early
450s she tried expanding into areas where it was much harder for a single
city state to establish its power securely.

IV. THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS

However great the disaster in Egypt, Thucydides does not suggest that
the Athenians were greatly chastened. After making a truce with the
Peloponnesians in 45 1 , they turned their attention to Cyprus once more,
and sent a force of two hundred Athenian and allied ships there under the
command of Cimon, returned from ostracism. 66 Sixty of these were
diverted to Egypt in response to an appeal from Amyrtaeus, ‘the king in
the marshes’, still holding out against Persia (cf. 1.110.2). On Cyprus a
siege of Citium was begun, and in the course of the fighting Cimon died;
the League forces won a combined land and sea battle against Phoeni-
cians, Cyprians and Cilicians, but they then withdrew from both Cyprus
and Egypt (1.1 12. 1-4). According to Diodorus (xn.3-4) the Athenians
captured Citium and Marium, and laid siege to Salamis, thus prompting
the Persians to sue for the Peace of Callias. After this Cyprus does not
figure in the history of Greece again until the last decade of the century,
though there is archaeological evidence for continuing contact. 67
Further dealings between Egypt and Athens are attested in the gift of
corn to Athens by Psammetichus in 445/4. If he was hoping to obtain
further intervention against Persia, he was unsuccessful. 68 There is only
one more appearance of the Delian League in Thucydides’ narrative
before the Samian War of 440-439: the revolt of Euboea in 446, followed
by the recognition of the League as an Athenian power bloc in the Thirty
Years’ Peace of 446/5, treated in connexion with events on the Greek
mainland (1.1 14-1 1 5 .i). 69

But, despite Thucydides’ silence, inscriptions indicate that these were
momentous years in the history of the League, that after the disaster in
Egypt Athens had lost ground to recover, and went further along the
road of becoming more despotic by insisting strictly on the allies’
performance of their obligations.

After the removal of the League’s treasury to Athens (above), the
Athenians claimed one-sixtieth of the tribute as an offering to Athena:
this quota of a sixtieth was calculated not on the total tribute but

66 On Cimon’s return from ostracism see p. 75.

67 Cf. CAH vr 2 ch. 1 ic. Excessive confidence in reconstructing the history of fifth-century
Cyprus is exposed by Maicr 1985 (f 49).

68 Cf. p. 77. For the suggestion of a bid for support against Persia see Plut. Per. 20.3 and Busolt

1 89 5 — 1 9°4 (a 12) nr. i. 500. 69 Cf. pp. 136-7.

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THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS

5 5

Fig. I. Fragment of an Athenian decree ( 7 G I 3 68 = M-L 68)
concerning tribute, with a relief showing tribute bags and
vessels. (After B. D. Meritt, Documents on Athenian Tribute (1937)

4 fig- > •)

separately on the payments of individual member states, and from 453 a
series of numbered, annual lists of these quotas was inscribed on stone.
We are thus able to discover how much tribute was paid by particular
members in particular years; and, since there was a tendency to list
together states in the same region (reinforced by the decision to organize
the lists in five regional categories from 443/2, and in four from the early
430s), where the texts are well enough preserved we can infer which
states did not pay any tribute at all in a particular year. 70

We also have a number of decrees of the Athenian Assembly affecting
individual members of the League or all the members, and a few
documents from individual members. Athens took to publishing state
documents in quantity after Ephialtes’ reform of 462/1; 71 and it is
noteworthy that the decrees which we have to consider are decrees of the
Athenian Assembly, not of the League Council. If the Council still
existed, we should expect at least such matters as the standardization of
weights, measures and coinage (M-L 45) and the collection of tribute
( IG i 3 34) to be decided by the Council: what is said of the Council in
Thuc. 1.96.2—97. 1 and hi. 10. 5 , 1 1.4, is not explicit about its fate, but it is a

70 The most recent edition of the quota-lists, incorporating the new fragments found in the
1970s, is IG i 3 259-90. There is a detailed Register of members and their payments inATLni 5-460
(based on the texts of the lists in that 1939 volume), and there are summary tables in Meiggs 538-61
(based on the texts \nATL 11). The relief in Fig. 1 here seems to symbolize the arrival of the tribute at
Athens. 71 Cf. p. 80.

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56 3 - THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

reasonable inference that, perhaps when the treasury was moved to
Athens, meetings of the Council were discontinued. 72

It appears from the earliest quota-lists that there were considerable
irregularities in the payment of tribute in the late 450s. 73 The first list,
that of 45 3, with the late payments from small Carian states in the first
column of the next list, contained about 1 5 5 entries; the rest of the list for
452, about 144; that for 451, about 143; that for 450, about 1 5 a; 74 that for
449, about 163, with an appendix containing not only some late whole-
payments but also complementary payments from about twenty
members whose initial payments had been incomplete. The lists are not
completely preserved, but from what is preserved the probability that a
member included in all of the first four survives in none of them is only
19 in 1,000; it is overwhelmingly likely that some states found later did
not appear in the earliest lists, either because they were still contributing
ships 75 or because they were disaffected and refused to pay when they
should have paid. 76 States not found earlier than the fourth list include
Andros, Ceos, Cos, Lebedos, Seriphos, Teos; altogether nineteen are
attested for the first time in this list, and twenty or more which appeared
in at least one of the first three lists must have failed to appear in this.
States not found earlier than the fifth list include Chalcis, Cythnos,
Eretria, Naxos, 77 Paros, Siphnos, Tenos; again nineteen in all are first
attested this year.

There are some positive indications of trouble. An Athenian decree
for Erythrae, which seems to have used the older letter-forms ( IC i 3 14:
we are dependent on a printer’s facsimile of a lost copy of a lost stone),
begins with offerings at the Panathenaea, and continues with regulations
for a council of 1 20 appointed by lot; Athenian overseers ( episkopoi ) and a
garrison commander are involved in setting up the council, and the
garrison commander is to be involved in future years; the council swears
allegiance to the people of Erythrae and of Athens and the allies; men
who have fled to the ‘Medes’ may not be taken back, and men who have
remained in Erythrae may not be exiled, without the permission of
Athens; in certain circumstances men are to be exiled from the whole
Athenian alliance. Presumably an anti-Athenian regime had come to

72 Jones 1952/3 (e 38) argued against this view, and Lewis in the commentary on IG i 3 64.9-1 1
wonders if there is a sign there that the Council survived in some form.

73 What I say about the earliest quotadists owes a good deal to unpublished work by Lewis.

74 Without the c. 18 Carian states which appear as late payers for 453 and in 450, the first and
fourth lists are shorter than the second and third: 453 and 450 are the years in which Athens
experienced the greatest difficulty in collecting tribute.

75 West 1929/30 (e 91); ATL hi 267-8; Woodhead 1974 (e 96) (but Woodhead 173-4, *77-8
thought some absences might be due to the chance of preservation).

76 Nesselhauf 1933 (e 57) 10-13; Meiggs 109-24 (cf. Meiggs 1943 (e 51) 28-31 and 1963 (e 52)

4-9)-

77 It is highly unlikely that Naxos was contributing ships: see above, p. 43, and below, p. 60.

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THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS

power with Persian support; Athens then overthrew this regime and
imposed a democratic constitution on Erythrae. Here we find Athens
infringing the autonomy of an ally which has rebelled by means which
she was to use frequently from the middle of the century onwards, but is
not known to have used before the late 450s: not merely a constitution
determined by Athens, but the sending of temporary overseers and a
permanent garrison, the setting of limits to the independence of the ally’s
law courts and the extension of some judicial sentences to the whole
League, and the demand for offerings at the Athenian festival of the
Panathenaea. 78

Some editors have restored the name of the Athenian archon of 45 3/2
in the second line of the text, but with archontic dates rare this early the
traces in the facsimile are not enough to justify the restoration.
Nevertheless the tribute record suggests that a date at the end of the 450s
is appropriate. 79 Erythrae is not attested in any of the first four quota-
lists; its neighbour Buthia appears in the first list, with the amount lost,
and in the second, with a tribute of as much as 3 talents ( IG i 3 259, v.19;
260, x.5): it is a plausible assumption that in 45 3 and 45 2 Erythrae was in
revolt and Buthia was paying on behalf of the dependencies which
remained loyal. Neither name survives in the third and fourth lists, of
45 1 and 450: one or the other is probably to be restored in the third, and
possibly in the fourth. In the fifth list Erythrae and its neighbours appear
in a block in the main part, with the amount lost, but Erythrae can have
paid little of its tribute at first, since it pays over 8£ talents among the
complementary payments later (IG i 3 263, ii.13— 17, v.3).

The requirement of offerings from Erythrae at the Panathenaea may
not have seemed alarming, since Erythrae was Ionian in the strictest
sense of that term, but before long this requirement was to be extended
to all members of the League (IG i 3 34, 41-3, of 447). There is another
sign of Athens’ taking the place of Delos not only as the financial but also
as the religious centre of the League: about the middle of the century
cults of Athena and of Ion and his sons were established in allied cities,
possibly on confiscated land. 80 We also see a development in the
language used to refer to the allies. The decree for Erythrae calls for
allegiance to Athens and the allies, in a formula which may well have

78 The fragments in IG i 3 1 5 arc probably not part of the same text. In an inscription from
Erythrae (DGE 701 = Hill, Sources 2 b 1 16 = IEK 2) there is a property qualification for jurors (lines a
1 3—1 8): this possibly but not certainly belongs to the constitution established by Athens; the editors
of IEK pp. 25—6 consider the possibility, but prefer a date before Athens’ intervention.

79 Mattingly 1963 (e 47) 271 with n. 69 originally favoured a later date, but subsequently he

changed his mind (E49, 206-7); an earlier date was preferred by Highby 1936 (e 35), especially 33—5,
Accame 195 2 (c 1 14) 119-23. Welwei 1986 (e 90) stresses that demos ‘people* or plethos ‘mass’ in such
texts as IG i 3 14 does not necessarily imply a democracy, and argues that when the Athenians
interfered in the constitution of an allied state in the mid-fifth century they were not doing so on
ideological grounds. 80 Barron 1964 (e 7) and 1983 (e 8).

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3. THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B.C.

been used since the earliest years of the League (except that before
Ephialtes’ reform of 462/1 we should not expect to find the emphasis on
the plethos, the mass of the people), and at a later point seems to refer to
‘the Athenian alliance’. Language of this kind was never wholly
abandoned (cf. IG i 3 101,9—1 1 , of 409), but before long more proprietor-
ial language was to come into use as well, with oaths of allegiance simply
to Athens (e.g. IG i 3 37, 43—8, and 40, 21—32, of 447-445), and references
to ‘the cities which Athens rules’ (restored in IG i 3 19, 8-9, and 27, 14-15,
of c. 450/49). 81

For Miletus we have several pieces of evidence. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.1 1
says that there Athens once supported the upper class, but they soon
revolted and cut down the demos. A Milesian decree of uncertain date,
whose beginning is lost, outlaws certain men and their descendants -
(M— L 43); another decree, probably to be dated 43 5 / 4, seems to reflect a
democracy modelled on that of Athens. 82 An Athenian decree for
Miletus (IG i 3 2 1 ) deals with judicial matters and appoints a board of five
Athenians to work with various Milesian officials: it has the older form
of lettering; probably its prescript dated it to the archonship of Euthynus
(or perhaps Euthynous, as in PA 5659), and certainly that archonship is
mentioned twice in the course of the decree. Literary texts give the name
Euthydemus to the archons of 450/49, 431/0 and 426/5 (Diod. xn.3.1,

3 8. 1 , 5 8. 1 , cf. Ath. v.2 1 7A, 2 1 8 b), but other texts, including a contempor-
ary inscription, call the archon of 426/5 Euthynus/nous (IG i 3 369, 5):
probably Diodorus has made the same mistake for 4 5 0/49, and the decree
belongs to that year. 83

The tribute record has been complicated by the new fragment of the
first list, first published in 1972. 84 At IG i 3 259, vi.19— 23, we have
Milesians from Leros and Teichiussa. These were interpreted in the same
way as Buthia (above), and it was assumed that Miletus itself did not pay
in 45 3 , so at iii. 1 8—20 part of the new fragment was restored with a three-
line entry, N eo7ro[Afrat €K]/MtAe[ro Iv /leu«6i]/’T/fp[oTept , o]t: HHH-, but
it can plausibly be argued that it is better to see here three separate
entries, of which the second is MiXe[aioi: — ]. 85 In the second list no
Milesians are clearly preserved, but MiXiaio] 1 £[k — ] is a possible
restoration at IG i 3 260, iii. 2. 86 In the third list M \Xea[ioi] appear, with
the quota lost (IG i 3 261, ii.28). In the fourth list no Milesians are

81 The language used to express the relationship between the superior partner and the inferior
partners in alliances is studied by Pistorius 1985 (a 98; on these formulae, 8-77).

82 Published by Herrmann 1970 (e 34): he dates it 437/6 on the basis of Milet\. iii 1 22.90; the later
date follows from Cavaignac 1924 (g ii) 311—14.

83 Mattingly first championed 426/5 in e 44, 174-81; in c 144, 1 17 he suggests a later date for

Herrmann’s decree. 84 Meritt 1972 (c 1 50). 85 Pierart 1974 (e 60).

86 [rcp/iuAJiffj], retained in IG i 3 , is unlikely to be right, since they have for some time made a
more secure appearance in the same list at ix.5.

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THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS

preserved. In the fifth list Miletus is among those whose whole payment
arrives late ( IG i 3 263, v.18); she seems not to have paid in 446; she
appears, paying half the tribute she paid in 449, in and after 442. The
normal view is that there was a first Milesian revolt in the late 450s, after
which Athens continued to tolerate an oligarchic government; and a
second in the 440s, after which a democracy was imposed but the tribute
was reduced. However, the Athenian decree no longer seems incompat-
ible with a democratic constitution, 87 and it has been suggested that there
was a single revolt in the 450s, followed by the establishment of
democracy. 88 It now looks as if there may have been a revolt about 450,
but not earlier, and the tribute record certainly does not exclude a second
revolt in the 440s; we cannot tell on which occasion the Athenians
imposed a democracy.

It is now clear, at any rate, that separate payment by a dependent
community need not prove that the principal community was refusing to
pay. In 1 974 a new fragment of the second list was published, from which
we learn of two communities of Phocaeans: 89 <PoKaiis napa [,]e[.]*o is
followed immediately by <Pokcu€s (IG i 3 260, viii.7-8; 9). In 450 there
were payments from Ceos and, separately, from the city of Coresia, but in
and after 449 there was a single payment from the whole of Ceos, larger
than the total of the two payments in 450 (IG i 3 262, v.22, i. 2 1 ; 263,
iv.21). Nor is absence from the lists as preserved always a sign of
disaffection. Sigeum is first preserved in the quota-list of 449 (IG i 3 263,
iv.25), but there is an Athenian decree of 45 1/0 (IG i 3 17) which praises it
for its loyalty, presumably because it has resisted pressure from the
Persians and/or its neighbours to be disloyal.

But, although spotting defectors is a difficult exercise, except in cases
where there is clear evidence of Athenian intervention, and we must
continue to allow for the possibility that some members changed from
ship-providing to tribute-paying about the end of the 450s, it is evident
that there must have been a considerable amount of defection in these
years, and that in dealing with it and trying to secure members against
future trouble Athens was led to take steps impinging on what
previously would have been regarded as the internal freedom of the
member states.

Plutarch writes of Pericles’ sending cleruchs (settlers who did not go

* 7 The prosetairoi (religious functionaries found in a Milesian sacred law of 450/49, SIG 57),
formerly restored in IG i 3 11.7, were eliminated by Bradeen and McGregor 1973 (c 121) 24-70.
Details in the democratic constitution of Miletus are studied by Pierart 1983 and 1985 (e6i): it was
not a carbon copy of the Athenian constitution.

80 Gehrke 1980 (£31). For another attempt to accommodate the evidence, see Robertson 1987 (e
70): in the 450s Miletus was divided, Athens supported the oligarchs in the city and enabled them get
control of the countryside; in the 440s there was a revolt, after which Athens imposed a democracy.

99 Camp 1974 (c 124) 314-18 no. 1.

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3. THE DELIAN LEAGUE TO 449 B. C.

as apoikoi, ‘colonists’, to found a totally independent state, but who
retained some connexion with Athens 90 ) to the Chersonese, Naxos,
Andros and Thrace, and to refound Sybaris in Italy as Thurii, in order to
relieve the city of the unemployed, to rectify the poverty of the people
and to provide a garrison which would prevent revolt among the allies
(Per. 11.5-6). Urban unemployment is not likely to have been a problem
in fifth-century Athens, but the cleruchies did provide land for Athenian
citizens at the allies’ expense and serve as an informal garrison:
presumably the allies which had cleruchies inflicted on them are allies
which had provoked Athenian interference. Diodorus mentions cleru-
chies in the Chersonese, Euboea and Naxos (xi.88.3): his year is 453/2; it
is his last mention of Athens in Book xi; the settlements in Euboea and
Naxos are attributed to Tolmides, who was killed at Coronea in 447/6
(xn.6.2).

Again, help can be obtained from the tribute record. Carystus, in
Euboea, paid 12 talents in 45 3 ( IG i 3 259, ii.16: part of the new fragment),
but only 7I talents in 450 (IG i 3 262, i.23) and only 5 in 449 (IG i 3 263,
iv.26) and after. Reduced tribute is likely to reflect reduced ability to pay,
and so it may be inferred that the cleruchy was sent in 45 3/2 or 452/1, and
that the further reduction of tribute in 449 was made in response to a plea
that the original reduction had been insufficient. 91 Andros first appears in
the quota-list of 450, with a tribute of 12 talents (IG i 3 262, i. 1 9), but in
449 (IG I 3 263, iv.22) and subsequent years it paid only 6 talents, so we
may infer that the cleruchy was sent in 450 and Andros’ tribute was
reduced to allow for this. Naxos is perhaps to be restored in 449, but
makes its first certain appearance in 447 (IG 13 263, iv.35; 264, ifi.25),
paying 6^ talents, a surprisingly small sum for so large and prosperous an
island. It is not likely to have remained a ship-provider after its early
revolt, 92 so it may be that there was further trouble about the middle of
the century, followed by the sending of the cleruchy mentioned by
Plutarch and reduction of the tribute to the level attested in 447. The
settlements in the Chersonese and in Thrace cannot be placed so early, 93
and the foundation of Thurii was an altogether different kind of
operation, 94 but it is likely that Athens’ policy of imposing cleruchies on
recalcitrant allies began, in Euboea, Andros and Naxos, at the end of the
450s. 95

It has been argued that, although the Athenians did not set out with
the intention of founding an empire, from the earliest years of the Delian
League they found themselves taking decisions which led to their

90 On the distinction between cleruchies and colonies see Brunt 1966 (e 13) 71—82.

91 For this sequence of events see Erxleben 1975 (e 23) 85—7.

92 Cf. above, p. 56 with n. 77. 93 Cf. pp. 127-9. 94 Cf. pp. 14 1—3.

95 The early cleruchies are discussed by Meiggs 12 1-4 (cf. Meiggs 1943 (e 51) 31—3, and 1963 (e
52) 8-9).

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THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS

furthering Athens’ particular interests as well as driving back the
Persians from the Greek world, and to their strengthening the position
of Athens within the League. The democracy of Ephialtes tried to
continue the war against Persia, in Cyprus and Egypt, and at the same
time to extend Athens’ power in Greece itself, but the attempt to keep
Egypt out of Persian hands ended in disaster, and the gains in Greece
were to prove insecure. After the failure in Egypt, Athens had to cope
with revolts from allies whose allegiance she must have come to take for
granted: in suppressing these revolts she carried Athenian interference
into areas of life where the allies’ freedom had not previously been
disturbed, and expressed her leadership in ways which suggest that she
was beginning to think of the League not as a free alliance but as an
empire which she could use as she wished. The climax of this transforma-
tion of the League was reached with the abandonment of the League’s
original objective, war against Persia — but that belongs to another
chapter . 96

96 See pp. 1 21-7.

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CHAPTER 4

THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

P. J. RHODES

I. ATHENS AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

We have little enough evidence for the external history of the Greek
cities between the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War; we have less
for the internal history even of Athens. Thucydides provides infor-
mation only on Themistocles: his clash with Sparta over the rebuilding
of Athens’ walls (1.90—2), and the story of his ostracism and his flight to
the Persians (1. 1 35—8). The Athenaion Politeia tells us of a period of good
government in which the Areopagus was predominant (23.1—2); and of
the leadership of Themistocles and Aristides, the foundation of the
Delian League and the resulting provision of trophe (maintenance) for
the Athenians (23.2—24); then follow Ephialtes’ attack on the Areopagus
and (probably an addition to the original text) an anecdote associating
Themistocles with him in that attack (25). The aristocrats had no leader
except Cimon, and the constitution became ‘slacker’ (26.1); in the 450s
the archonship was opened to the % eugitai (the third of the four property
classes), the dikastai kata demons (deme judges) were revived, and the law
of Pericles was enacted, which limited citizenship to those whose parents
were both Athenians (26.2—4); Pericles attacked the Areopagus and
fostered Athens’ naval power; to rival Cimon’s generosity with his own
wealth he used the state’s wealth to introduce payment for jury service
(27). There are short lives by Nepos of Themistocles, Aristides and
Cimon, and longer lives by Plutarch of these three and of Pericles.
Plutarch’s Themistocles , after telling stories of him in Athens after the
Persian Wars (20-22.3), writes at length of his downfall and his flight to
Asia (22.4—31.3); Aristides proposes an extension of democracy and
pronounces on a suggestion of Themistocles (22), organizes the Delian
League (23—25.3), ends his life in virtuous poverty and does not join in
the attack on Themistocles (25.3-27); Cimon puts his wealth to political
use and takes a conservative line in politics (10), commands in the
campaigns of the Delian League until he is prosecuted after the Thasian

The basic text was drafted in 1979-80; I have tried to add references to some of the substantial later
bibliography. Most of the topics are treated at greater length in Rhodes 1981 (c 83).

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ATHENS AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 63

war (6-9, 1 1— 14), clashes with Ephialtes over support for Sparta and the
powers of the Areopagus, and is ostracized (15— 17.3), tries to return at
the battle of Tanagra and dies on a final campaign in Cyprus (17.4— 19);
Pericles takes a democratic line, using jury pay to counter Cimon’s
generosity and joining in the attack on the Areopagus (7, 9), and the
story of Cimon at Tanagra is followed by a digression on Pericles’
prosecution of Cimon and a denial that Pericles could be the murderer of
Ephialtes (10.6-8).

Themistocles, the creator of Athens’ new fleet and the man respon-
sible for the decision to fight at Salamis, 1 is not found with the fleet again
after 480: Xanthippus commanded in 479, Aristides in 478, and Cimon
thereafter. In various matters Themistocles and Cimon may be seen as
opponents. Themistocles was responsible for the rebuilding of Athens’
walls after the Persian Wars, in the face of Spartan objections, and there
are other stories of his coming into conflict with Sparta, though in
480/79 he was better received there than any other foreigner (Hdt.
viii. 1 24— 5); but Cimon gave the name Lacedaemonius to a son born in
the 470s, 2 and was eager to help Sparta in the Third Messenian War. The
two men differed in their interpretation of Athens’ recent history. The
expulsion of the tyrant Hippias in 5 10 had been due to the Alcmaeonid
family and Sparta: the pro-Spartan Cimon had married an Alcmaeonid
wife about 480, and was presumably happy to acknowledge this debt;
but his relative Thucydides complains that the Athenians gave the credit
for ending the tyranny to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who had
murdered Hipparchus in 5 14 (1.20.2, vi.54— 9), and the epigram on the
base of the new statues of these men set up in 477/6 to replace those taken
by the Persians was by Themistocles’ friend Simonides. 3 There was
dispute also as to whether Athens owed her salvation from the Persians
primarily to the victory at Marathon, won by the army and Cimon’s
father Miltiades, or to that at Salamis, won by the fleet and Themisto-
cles. 4 Themistocles was clever, and had successfully interpreted a
Delphic oracle when he insisted on fighting at Salamis: Plutarch tells
stories in which Cimon outdid Themistocles in cleverness ( Cim . 5.1,9),
and Cimon interpreted a Delphic oracle commanding the Athenians to
bring back the bones of Theseus, and brought a skeleton from Scyros. 5
Themistocles was responsible for rebuilding the city walls after the war,
but the spoils won by Cimon at the Eurymedon paid for the building of

* Cf. CAH iv 2 524-5, 571—6. 2 Date: Davies 1971 (l 27) 305.

3 On the ending of the tyranny, see CAH tv 2 299-302; on defenders of the claims of the
Aicmaeonids and of Harmodius and Aristogeiton see Podlecki 1966 (d 69).

4 PL Leg. rv, 707b4~c7; Fornara 1966(0 28) 5 1—3; and cf. below, p. 67, on Aeschylus’ Persae (but a
further block of M— L 26, with additional verses, renders pre-1988 descriptions of that inscription
out of date). 5 See Podlecki 1971 (o 70).

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4 . THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

the south wall of the Acropolis (Plut. Cim. 13.5); and each man is
credited with other public works too. 6

Xanthippus is not heard of again after 479: since his son Pericles was
choregos to Aeschylus in 472 he was presumably dead by then. Aristides
survived, but is hard to place. In the main tradition he is consistently the
rival of Themistocles, aristocratic and upright where Themistocles was
democratic and cunning, and Plutarch’s Cimon makes him an associate of
Cimon (5.6, 10.8); but there are traces of an alternative version which
placed Aristides on the same side as Themistocles after the war: in the
story of the walls and in other stories of Themistocles, Aristides appears
as his confidant, in Ath. Pol. 23.2—24 Aristides is the partner of
Themistocles and founder of the league which provided trophe for the
Athenian demos, and in Plutarch’s Aristides (25.10), although Themisto-
cles had been responsible for his ostracism, Aristides did not join in the
final attack on him; the summary of the narrative in Ath. Pol. (41.2)
makes Aristides the predecessor of Ephialtes in advancing the democ-
racy, and Plutarch’s Aristides (22.1) makes him the author after the war
of a decree that the constitution should be ‘common’ and the archontes
chosen from all Athenians. Before the war against Xerxes, Aristides was
a rival of Themistocles ; 7 after his organization of the Delian League
there is no evidence of his further involvement in public affairs, and the
texts linking him with Themistocles rather than Cimon are the more
circumstantial and credible.

Apart from Plutarch’s attribution of a democratic reform to Aristides,
not mentioned elsewhere and clearly fictitious, there is no evidence that
how the Athenian state ought to be governed was a live issue in the 470s.
Ath. Pol. 23. 1—2 tells of a period ofAreopagite ascendancy, saying that it
was based not on any resolution but on prestige. This, too, is to be
connected with the rivalry arising out of the Persian Wars: Plutarch
{Them. 10. 6—7) cites both Ath. Polls story that, when Athens was
evacuated before Salamis and the generals were at a loss, the Areopagus
provided money for the citizens, and the alternative account of Clidemus
{FGrH 323 f 21), that Themistocles provided the money by searching
men’s luggage. Probably Ath. Polls is the original version of the story,
an attempt by Themistocles’ opponents to give the Areopagus some of

6 For instance, in the case of Cimon, the Theseum built to house Theseus' bones (on which see
Barron 1972 (1 9)), the Stoa Poikile (Thompson and Wycherley 1972(1 166) 90-4; cf. Plut. Cim. 4.6-
7) and the Telesterion and other work immediately after the Persian Wars at Gleusis (e.g. Mylonas
1962 (k 66) 107-13) are ascribed to him, though without positive evidence (Shear, 1982 (r 1 5 i) dates
the ‘Cimonian’ Telesterion in the 480s). Themistocles was responsible for the temple of Artemis
Aristoboule (Travlos 1971 (1 1 7 1 ) 1 2 1—3 ; cf. Plut. Them. iz.2—$ > Demai.Hdi. 869 d), the Telesterion
at Phyla (Plut. Them. 1.4), and possibly some work on the Odeon (Vitr. De Arch, v.9.1, with
Davison 1958 (k 21) 33— 42 and 1962 (k 2i)(= Davison 1968 (j 20) 48-66, 66-9), but Themistocles is
not mentioned by Travlos 1971 (1 171) 587). 7 Cf. CAH iv 2 343—4.

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ATHENS AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS 65

the credit for Salamis, and Clidemus’ is a reply restoring the credit to
Themistocles. 8 In the 470s most of the Areopagites will have been men
who were appointed archons after the fall of the tyranny, by direct
election from the two highest property classes, 9 and the Council of the
Areopagus will thus have been a fairly distinguished collection of
Athenians. It retained judicial powers of political importance, and it may
— we have no evidence — on occasions have debated matters of public
concern and given advice to the magistrates or to the Council of Five
Hundred and the Assembly. However, there is no reason why the
Areopagus should have been more powerful in the 470s than it had been
in the 480s, and probably the tradition of a period of Areopagite
ascendancy was built up later with the help of the Salamis story, when it
was known that Ephialtes had put an end to the political power of the
Areopagus, to explain why such a reform should have been necessary.

Themistocles and Cimon were rivals as individuals, and stood for
different views of Athens’ recent history and different views of the
foreign policy which Athens ought to pursue. This rivalry culminated in
the ostracism of Themistocles, and his subsequent condemnation on a
charge of medism (treacherous support for the Persians). The story of his
flight is told by Thucydides (1.135-8), and was repeated, with
variations and elaborations, by many later writers. According to
Thucydides, Themistocles when ostracized went to live in Argos, and
visited other places in the Peloponnese; after the death of Pausanias the
Spartans sent messengers to Athens alleging that the two men were
together guilty of medism, and Themistocles on learning of this fled
from Argos (Thucydides does not mention that he was prosecuted in
absentia-, according to Craterus, FGrH 342 F 11, the prosecutor was an
Alcmaeonid). He went first to the west, to Corcyra and then to Epirus;
Admetus of the Molossi refused either to surrender him to his pursuers
or to let him stay, and sent him across northern Greece to Pydna. From
Pydna he took a ship to Asia Minor, travelling incognito; but a storm
carried the ship towards Naxos while the Athenians were besieging the
city, and Themistocles had to reveal his identity to the captain and urge
him not to betray him; the captain did not put in to land but kept the ship
riding at anchor, and in due course brought Themistocles safely to
Ephesus. Themistocles wrote to Artaxerxes, who had recently suc-
ceeded Xerxes, and set about learning Persian; after a year he went to
meet the Great King, and the man who had contributed so much to the
defeat of the Persian invasion of 480 ended his life as an honoured

8 It appears that these two versions of the story underlie successive examples in Arist. Pol. v,
1504217—24; Ath. Pol. solves the problem by making the Areopagite ascendancy a short-term and
the development of the Delian League to Athens’ advantage a long-term consequence of Salamis
(with the democratic version of the story suppressed). 9 Cf. CAH iv 2 520.

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4 • THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

pensioner of the Persians. Ironically, there is no firm evidence and little
likelihood that he was guilty of medism at any time before his arrival in
Asia Minor.

The chronology of Themistocles’ flight has been endlessly dis-
cussed. 10 He is last attested in Athens as choregos in the spring of 476 (Plut.
Them. 5.5), and his appearance at Olympia (Plut. Them. 5.4, 17.4, cf. Ael.
VH xiii. 43, Paus. viii. 50. 3) should belong to the summer of that year.
The most reliable detail in the story of his flight is that he met the new
Persian king, Artaxerxes, who came to the throne in 465 ; n Ephorus and
other later writers made Themistocles approach Xerxes, the king whom
he had defeated in 480, but Thucydides’ less exciting version was rightly
preferred by both Nepos (Them. 9.1) and Plutarch (Them. 27.1—2). The
death of Pausanias, which preceded the accusation of medism and
Themistocles’ flight from Argos, is more easily placed after than before
470, 12 and so supports this conclusion. The text of Thucydides takes
Themistocles from Pydna past Naxos to Ephesus; but Plutarch (Them.
25.2—26.1), while claiming to follow Thucydides, takes him past Tha-
sos, 13 while the Athenians were besieging that city, to Cyme (which
arouses suspicion as the home of Ephorus, to which that writer gave as
much publicity as he could: cf. FGrH 70 f 236). Thucydides gives us no
dates in his sketch of the growth of the Delian League: the siege of
Thasos can be dated 465/4 -463/2, 14 but that of Naxos is insecure; if we
accept Thucydides’ route the siege of Naxos can hardly be earlier than c.
466, and nothing that Thucydides says conflicts with that date, but most
of those who have wrestled with the chronology of the Pentekontaetia
have placed it some years earlier. 15 Perhaps it is wrong to assume that
either Thucydides’ route or Plutarch’s route must be correct: it is
certainly true that Themistocles in crossing the Aegean will have to take
care not to fall into the hands of the Athenians, and the alternative routes
may be no more than rival attempts to make of this a story with
convincing details.

Ostracism entailed banishment for ten years, and we do not know how
long a period elapsed between Themistocles’ ostracism and his flight
from Argos. Diodorus narrates the whole story under the year 471/0
(xi.54— 9), and many have been anxious to believe that one episode in the
story was known to belong to that year; but in this part of his history
Diodorus found only one major story to tell under each year, and in view
of his demonstrable errors in the 430s 16 it would be unwise to assume

10 On the flight of Themistocles see in general Podlecki 1975 (d 71) 37-44; Lenardon 1978(047)
108—5 35 maximum scepticism is displayed by Rhodes 1970 (c 82).

11 See p. 13 n. 47. 12 Cf. p. 46.

13 Only one MS has ©aaov , but it is supported by Cyme as the destination, and Na£ov in the
others is probably a correction made from Thucydides; see Flaceliere 1953 (d 27) 6-7.

!4 Cf. p. 45. 15 Cf. pp. 44—6. 16 Cf. p. 7.

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THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS

that he had any justification for assigning the fall of Themistocles to this
year. In the spring of 472 Aeschylus produced a set of tragedies including
the Persae, Pericles being the choregos. The play treats of the Persians’
defeat at Salamis as experienced by the Persians at Susa: Salamis was the
greatest achievement of the Athenians in the war against Xerxes, but it
was specifically the achievement of Themistocles and Aristides (though
neither is named in the play); at a time when Salamis was being invoked
in the rivalry between Themistocles and Cimon it is hard to believe that a
tragedian whose sympathies were not with Themistocles would have
chosen to write a play on this theme. 17 However, Themistocles had
become a controversial figure before his ostracism and remained so
afterwards: we cannot say whether he was ostracized before or after the
production of the Persae , 18 and the exact date of his ostracism must
remain an unsolved problem.

By the ostracism and condemnation of Themistocles, Cimon’s chief
rival was eliminated. In the spring of 468 an unusual honour was paid to
Cimon. Plutarch reports (Cim. 8.7-9) that at the Dionysia in that year the
archon did not appoint the usual judges of the tragic contest but called
on Cimon and his fellow-generals to act as judges: although Aeschylus
was competing, they awarded the prize to Sophocles, competing for the
first time. It may have been clear that Sophocles’ were the better plays,
but if Aeschylus was a champion of Themistocles it was politically
appropriate that Cimon and his colleagues should refuse him the prize.

II. THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS 19

It is used to be thought that the Supplices was the earliest surviving play
of Aeschylus, but in 1952 a papyrus fragment was published which
shows that the tetralogy of which that formed a part won the first prize
on an occasion when plays by Sophocles won the second prize, ini ap —
(P. Oxj. xx. 2256, fr. 3). If Sophocles competed for the first time in 468,
the Supplices is later than that, and if ap is the beginning of an archon’s
-name rather than of apxovros, the only possible year is 464/3, the

17 Persae a patriotic Athenian play, Lattimore 1943 (j 61); a defence of Themistocles, Podlecki
1966 (j 87) 8-26; possibly hostile to Themistocles, Lenardon 1978 (d 47) 12 1-5.

18 Lenardon ( loc . eit.) abandoned his earlier view (Lenardon 1959 (b 7) 29 with nn. 3 3-4) that the
play was a defence of Themistocles after his ostracism; before his ostracism, Podlecki 1966 (j 87) 1 2
with 157 n. ix.

19 This chapter was written before the appearance of Ostwald 1986 (a 96). He discusses major
trials in the early fifth century and the reforms of Ephialtes on pp. 28—53; chief difference
between us is that he believes that capital sentences by the Areopagus were made subject to ephesis
c. 500 (cf. below, p. 72 n. 31), and he therefore attaches less importance than I do to Ephialtes*
removal of what remained of the Areopagus* jurisdiction in this field. For another recent study of
the Ephialtic reform see Wallace 1989 (d 105) 72-93.

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4. THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

archonship of Archedemides. 20 Supplices is a play set in the heroic period,
in which the fifty daughters of Danaus flee with him from Egypt, to
avoid incestuous marriage with the fifty sons of his brother Aegyptus,
and seek sanctuary with king Pelasgus of Argos; attempts to see in this a
reflection of the flight of Themistocles from Argos 21 are implausible.
However, Pelasgus is a remarkably unkingly king: he is not immediately
recognizable as king at his first appearance (11. 247-8), and throughout
the central part of the play it is emphasized that the decision to accept or
reject the suppliants must be taken not by the king but by an assembly of
the people ( 11 . 365-523, 600-24). This is not required by the legend , and
can hardly be accidental: the play is not crude propaganda for democ-
racy, but it does display a sympathetic interest in the view that the demos
ought to be sovereign. 22 How the state ought to be governed, apparently
not a live issue immediately after the war, had now become one.
Aeschylus in 472 had extolled the achievements of Themistocles and
Aristides, and Pericles, the future leader of the democracy, had been his
choregos\ in 468 he had been passed over by Cimon and his colleagues in
favour of the novice Sophocles; in 463 he gave his sympathetic attention
to the theme of democracy. These three instances all point in the same
direction, and Aeschylus may be ranked with the believers in popular
sovereignty and the opponents of Cimon.

Shortly after the production of the Supplices we have the first sign of an
attack on Cimon. He commanded the Athenians in their successful siege
of Thasos (465/4-463/2), but on his return to Athens it was alleged that
he had been bribed not to attack Macedon. He was prosecuted, a board
of ten prosecutors being elected for the purpose; Pericles was one of the
prosecutors, and the story was told by Stesimbrotus that Cimon’s sister
Elpinice tried to plead with him and that he was in fact the least insistent
of the prosecutors (Plut. Cim. 14. 3-1 5.1; Per. 10.6). It is said that Sparta
had promised without the Athenians’ knowledge to support Thasos by
invading Attica, but had been prevented by the great earthquake of 464
and the outbreak of the Third Messenian War (Thuc. i.ioi.i— 2). Athens
was still an ally of Sparta, by virtue of the alliance made when Xerxes’
invasion was imminent (cf. 102.4), and Sparta appealed for help to
Athens and her other allies. Thucydides reports that Cimon was sent
with a substantial army (102.1); Aristophanes specifies four thousand
hoplites {L.js. 1 138—44); Plutarch tells us that this was a contentious issue
in Athens, with Ephialtes not wanting to help a rival city but Cimon
claiming that it would be wrong to make Greece lame or deprive Athens
of her yoke-fellow (Cim. 16.9-10, citing Critias and Ion).

20 See especially Lesky 1954 (j 64).

21 Cavaignac 1921 (d 12); cf. Forrest i960 (f 24) 239-40, Podlecki 1966 (j 87) 42-62.

22 Cf. Podlecki loc. cit.

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THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS

The Third Messenian War presents another of the notorious chrono-
logical cruces of the Pentekontaetia , 23 Thucydides, if our text is sound,
says that the war ended in the tenth year (1.103.1), but events which he
mentions before and after were less than ten years apart: apparently this
was recognized as a problem in antiquity, and behind the narrative of
Plutarch, in which Cimon twice went to the Peloponnese and twice
returned to Athens ( Cim . 17. 1-3), there may be rival accounts with
different chronologies. The Spartans were afraid of the daring and
radicalism ( neoteropoiia ) of the Athenians, suspected that they would be
persuaded by the rebels to take radical action (neoieri^ein), and so,
claiming that they had no further need of them, sent them home; the
Athenians reacted by breaking off their alliance with Sparta and making
alliances with Sparta’s enemies, Argos and Thessaly (Thuc. 1. 102. 3-4).
Plutarch, after mentioning his prosecution and acquittal, says that when
Cimon sailed off on another campaign Ephialtes accomplished his
reform of the Areopagus, and Cimon on his return tried to upset the
reform and revive ‘the aristocracy of Cleisthenes’ time’, but he was
attacked by his enemies, who referred to scandals concerning his sister
and to his lakonismos (support for Sparta), and inflamed the demos against
him {Cim. 15); then follow a passage on Cimon’s friendship for Sparta
and the account of his helping Sparta against the Messenians (16-17.3);
when Sparta dismissed the Athenian army the Athenians were angry
with the laconizers and, ‘seizing on a small excuse’ (perhaps a pro-
Cimonian view of his dismissal by Sparta), ostracized him (17.3). In the
Pericles Plutarch links the reform of the Areopagus by Ephialtes with the
ostracism of Cimon as philolakon (pro-Spartan) and misodemos (anti-
democratic) (9.5). Cimon will not have taken his hoplites to Messenia by
sea, but probably when Plutarch writes that he ‘sailed off on another
campaign’ and that the reform was enacted in his absence {Cim. 1 5.2) he
is in fact referring to that expedition; and what particularly made the
Spartans fear the neoteropoiia of their Athenian allies will have been the
news that in Athens Ephialtes, known to have opposed the expedition,
was now in control. Hoplites as well as thetes stood to gain from the
reform of the Areopagus, and the absence of four thousand hoplites will
not necessarily have tipped the balance in the Assembly; but Cimon was
opposed to the reform, and, unsatisfactory as Plutarch’s narrative is, his
statement that the reform occurred while Cimon was away from Athens
need not be rejected. 24

Ephialtes is a man about whom hardly anything is known. His father

23 Cf. p. 500.

24 See, in favour of this chronology, Busolt 1893-1904 (a 12) m.i. 261 with n. 1, Hignett 1952 (d
38) 196, 337-41, Cole 1974 (d tj); arguing that Cimon’s dismissal preceded the reform, Beloch
1912-27 (a 2) H. 1. 1 5 3, 11.2.196-8, Walker CAHv* 71, 467-8, Jacoby, FGrHm bsuppl. ii 369-700.
l 7-

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70 4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

was called Sophonides (a name not found on any ostraca); like Aristides
he is described as upright ( Ath . Pol. 25.1), and like Aristides he is
included in a list of leading statesmen who were not rich (Ael. KH 11.43 ,
xi. 9, xiii. 39); he once commanded a naval expedition (Plut. Cim. 13.4).
In Ath. Pol. 25.3—4 he and Themistocles are said to have combined to
attack the Areopagus, but 25.2 dates the reform to 462/1 and Themisto-
cles must have left Athens long before ; 3 5 . 2 mentions the annulment by
the Thirty in 404 of the laws of Ephialtes and a not securely identifiable
Archestratus; Plutarch mentions Pericles as a supporter of Ephialtes
{Cim. 15.2; Per. 9.5, 10.7: he will have been a little over thirty in 462/1),
and the separate reform of the Areopagus attributed to Pericles in Ath.
Pol. 27.1 is probably a distortion of this fact. 25
We read in Ath. Pol. 25.2 that Ephialtes

first eliminated many of the Ateopagites, bringing them to trial over their
administration. Then in the archonship of Conon he stripped off from the
Council all the accretions ( epitheta ) on which its guardianship of the state
depended, giving some to the five hundred and some to the demos and the law
courts.

(The trials of individuals were probably for misconduct as archons. 26 )
According to Plutarch {Cim. 15.2),

the many were finally unleashed, and overturned the existing order in the state
and the traditional observances which they had previously followed, and with
Ephialtes as leader they took away from the Council of the Areopagus all but a
few of its judicial functions {kriseis), making themselves masters of the law
courts and pitching the city into undiluted democracy.

The account of Ath. Pol. is favourable to the reformers, while that of
Plutarch is hostile; and probably the language which they use derives
from the propaganda of the time: the powers of which Ephialtes
deprived the Areopagus were regarded as accretions by the reformers, as
part of the established order by the conservatives. 27 These powers were
primarily judicial, and they had given the Areopagus a ‘guardianship of
the state’. This role of the Areopagus is mentioned by Ath. Pol. in its
account of the pre-Draconian constitution (3.6), in the supposed
constitution of Draco (4.4), and in the account of Solon’s constitutional
laws (8.4), but we are nowhere told precisely what powers it entailed.
Some have supposed that it was a specific power, possibly a power of

25 Arist. Pol. 11, 127437-8 would be compatible either with separate reforms by Ephialtes and
Pericles or with a joint reform.

26 Wade-Gery 1936/7 (d 102) 269= 1958 (a 121) 177.

27 A fragment of Lysias (178 Sauppe, ap. Harp. iiriOcrovs copras) shows that the Areopagus was
discussed in the same terms c. 400; Davies 1978 (a 23) 69-70 compares an inscription of the 450s ( IG
l 3 7) which defines what things are traditional for the priestly clan of the Praxiergidae.

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THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS

quashing improper decrees of the Assembly, as later there was a
democratic way of quashing improper decrees through the graphe
paranomon (charge of making an illegal proposal ); 28 others have thought
that it was a comprehensive description of the various powers of the
Areopagus as a body entrusted with the enforcement of the laws . 29 It
appears from Ath. Pol. that the Areopagus had long been referred to in
this way: perhaps this language was first used, when the laws were first
written down by Draco or even earlier, to provide a comprehensive
description of the Areopagus’ judicial powers, and in the course of time,
as circumstances altered, this description and the prestige of the
Areopagites were used to justify its enforcing the laws in new ways,
without explicit authority. If this is so, we can understand how these
powers came to be rejected as accretions by some but defended as part of
the established order by others.

But we have still to discover what powers Ephialtes took away from
the Areopagus. Two possibilities may be suggested. First, the magis-
trates of Classical Athens were subject to frequent checks on their
conduct: before entering office they had to undergo a vetting process
called dokimasia {Ath. Pol. 5 5 . 2); after leaving office they had to present
their accounts, and submit to a more general examination called euthjnai
(54.2; 48.4—5); while in office they had to present interim accounts each
prytany (i.e. each tenth of the year), and each prytany the Assembly held
a vote of confidence in the authorities (48.3; 43.4, 61.2). There are signs
that dokimasia and euthjnai were ancient institutions, and the body most
likely to have conducted these examinations, and any other examinations
that there may have been, of at any rate the principal magistrates in early
Athens, is the Areopagus; such oversight of the magistrates would have
given it considerable political power. 30 Secondly, Solon’s laws included
one on the prosecution before the Areopagus, by eisangelia (impeach-
ment), of ‘those who conspired for the dissolution of the demos’ {Ath.
Pol. 8.4: Solon is more likely to have referred to setting up a tyranny than
to dissolving the demos , but the basic fact may be accepted); eisangelia was
used also for treason, for taking bribes to speak contrary to the interests
of Athens, and perhaps for public wrongs not explicitly forbidden by
law; in Classical Athens these eisangeliai were tried by the Council of Five
Hundred and the Assembly, or the Five Hundred and a law court. How
certain charges in the early fifth century came to be tried by the demos has

25 E.g. Wade-Gery 1933 (d ioi) 24 with n. 3= 1958 (a 121) 146 with n. 4.

29 E.g. Hignett 1952 (d 38) 208-9; Cawkwell 1988 (d 14) interprets the Areopagus’ guardianship
of the laws as a cura morum.

30 Cf. Lipsius 1 905-1 5 (a 78) 37; Hignett 1952 (d 38) 90-1, 203-8 (not accepting dokimasiai by the
Areopagus).

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4 . THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

been disputed, but it is likely that until 462/1 eisangeliai to the Areopagus
remained possible, and that Ephialtes abolished this possibility. 31

If the Areopagus had claimed the right to quash decrees of the
Assembly, this too must have been abolished: but the democratic graphe
paranomon is not attested until 41 5 (Andoc. 1. Myst. 1 7), and although it is
possible that the earlier silence of our sources is accidental it is by no
means necessary; 32 probably this is not a right which the Areopagus had
claimed. By the second half of the fifth century, contested lawsuits went
not to Solon’s heiiaia (a judicial session of the Assembly) on appeal from
the verdict of a magistrate but to one of a number of dikasteria (jury-
courts) after a preliminary enquiry by a magistrate: it is has been
suggested that this change was made by Ephialtes; 33 but more probably
there was a gradual development rather than an abrupt reform, though
the new procedure will have had to be standardized, and that can hardly
have been done much later than 462/1. 34 A passage derived from the
third-century historian of Athens, Philochorus, states that a board of
seven nomophylak.es (law-guardians) was established at the time of
Ephialtes’ reform ( FGrH 328 f 64b(a)); but the first contemporary
evidence for this board comes from speeches by Dinarchus in the late
320s (f 64a), and the attribution to Ephialtes must be a mistake. One
other change, however, needs to be postulated: if the judicial activities of
the Areopagus had been based on its title of guardian of the laws, it must
have lost that title; a purely negative measure is unlikely, but it may have
been stated that in future the Council of Five Hundred and the demos
were to be guardians of the laws. The powers which the Areopagus is
known to have retained after the reform were further judicial powers, in
connexion with intentional homicide, wounding and arson, damage to
the sacred olive trees, and certain other religious offences (Lys. vii. 01 .
22; Dem. xxiii. Arist. 22; [Dem.] lix. Neaer. 79-80; Ath. Pol. 57.3, 60.2).

The Areopagus was a council of ex-archons. In the sixth century the
archonship had been the most important office of the Athenian state; but

31 On eisangelia see Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 162—71, 199— 205, and 1979(0 77); Hansen 1975 (d jo)and
1980(033); Sealey 1981 (o 8 8); Cara wan 1987(0 1 1). Hansen believes that eisangelia was a democratic
institution introduced by Cleisthenes; some have thought that it was Cleisthenes who took the
hearing of eisangeliai from the Areopagus (Lipsius 1905—15 (a 78) 179—81), or that Cleisthenes
allowed prosecution before the demos as an alternative to prosecution before the Areopagus (Bonner
and Smith 1930-8 (a 8) t 299-300), or that Cleisthenes required confirmation of the Areopagus’
verdicts by the demos (Ostwald in CAH iv 2 330-3). Sealey argues that eisangelia was regulated by
custom rather than by law; 1 sympathize, and agree that it originated thus, but believe that a law of
Solon provided for eisangelia to the Areopagus in cases of attempted tyranny (without necessarily
providing a complete law of eisangelia), and that Ephialtes took away from the Areopagus the right
to hear eisangeliai. Cara wan studies eisangelia and euthynai in the light of the major trials of the early
fifth century.

32 Cf. Wolff 1 970 (a 127) 15-22. 33 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 180-200.

34 Sealey 1964(0 87) 14-18 = 1967 (a 111)46-52; MacDowell 1978 (a 81) 33 doubts whether the
old procedure was ever forbidden.

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THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS

in 487/6 sortition from an elected short list ( klerosis ek prokriton) had
replaced direct election, and in the fifth century the generals overtook
the archons in prestige and importance: 35 a powerful Areopagus thus
became increasingly hard to justify. The new organization given to the
Athenian state by Cleisthenes required a considerable degree of partici-
pation by the citizens, both at polis level and at local level, and we may
assume that the Athenians came to enjoy their share in the political
process and to want a larger share. 36 Thus it need cause no surprise that
the powers of the Areopagus came to be challenged. There may have
been a more specific stimulus for the challenge in two decisions given by
the Areopagus in the course of the 460s. The procedure of eisangelia
would have been appropriate for the prosecution of Themistocles on a
charge of medism, and according to Craterus that was the procedure
used ( FGrH 342 f i i); Cimon’s euthynai would have been an appropriate
occasion for his prosecution on a charge of taking bribes as a general, and
according to Ath. Pol. (27.1) that was the occasion of his prosecution;
both of these charges may have been tried by the Areopagus, and a trial
of Themistocles by the Areopagus underlies the (implausible) anecdote
in Ath. Pol. 25.3—4. Themistocles appears to have been innocent, and on
Cimon’s guilt we cannot pronounce, but Themistocles was condemned
and Cimon was acquitted: if the Areopagus was consistently giving
verdicts in favour of Cimon and his supporters, their opponents may
well have been prompted to ask by what right it occupied so influential a
position in the state.

Present-day historians have been less willing than their predecessors
to ascribe to ancient politicians doctrinaire views on how their states
should be governed, and have preferred to look for other explanations of
their actions. What happened in 462/1 in Athens can certainly be
represented as the victory of the Themistocles-Ephialtes— Pericles set
over the Cimon-Alcmaeonid set. 37 The victory was marked by a change
in foreign policy: Athens abandoned the friendship with Sparta of the
last thirty years, and extended her ambition to the whole Greek world;
some have suggested that this was Ephialtes’ primary objective and that
the reform of the Areopagus was incidental to its achievement. 38 But it is
wrong to play down the importance of the constitutional reform. By the

>5 Cf. CAH iv 2 333.

36 According to Ath. Pol. 22.3 the institution of ostracism was used after Marathon, ‘the demos
now being confident’; on the growing confidence of the demos see below, pp. 90-1.

37 On the politics of the Alcmaeonids in the fifth century, see Forrest i960 (f 24) 233-4 ( contra
Bicknell 1972 (o 6) 73-4). The ideological aspect of the reform is played down by Sealey 1964 (d
87)= 1967 (a 11 1)42-58, Wallace 1974(0 104), Sealey 1981 (d 88), and studies cited in the next note.

36 Cf. Ruschenbusch 1966 (d 81); Martin 1974(0 5 7), especially 29-40. Ruschenbusch 1979(0 82)
argues that all constitutional changes to the end of the fifth century were made to achieve immediate
objectives, particularly in foreign policy. By contrast, Thuc. v.3 1 .6, 44. 1 show foreign policy being
influenced by constitutional dogmatism.

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4 - THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

opening years of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians were proud of
their democracy: the Athenaion Politeia of pseudo-Xenophon describes it
as undesirable but effective (i . i), and the funeral oration of Pericles takes
pride in it (Thuc. n.37); misodemos (‘hating the people’ and so anti-
democratic, used of Citnon by Plutarch) is a word of abuse in Aristo-
phanes ( Wasps 474, of 422); Sparta had come to be associated with
oligarchy (cf. Thuc. 1.19), while Athens had come to be associated with
democracy and had imposed democratic constitutions on various
member states of the Delian League (on Erythrae, as early as the 450s:
M— L 4 o = IG i 3 14). Aeschylus in his Supplices had emphasized the
powers of the demos\ and in his Eumenides, in 45 8, he focused attention on
the Areopagus as a homicide court: Athena’s speech instituting the
Areopagus points to the good that it will do in this role, as long as the
citizens do not introduce innovations or defilements in the laws, and
ends by describing the Areopagus as a ‘wakeful guardian of the land on
behalf of the sleeping’ (11. 68 1—7 10, esp. 704-6); later passages in the play
point to a fear of civil war ( 11 . 858—66, 976-87). So far we have seen that
Aeschylus is to be associated with the democrats, and many regard this
presentation of the Areopagus as favourable to the reformers, but the
allusion to the Areopagus as guardian and the warning against defiling
the laws suggest rather that Aeschylus had come to regret the reform or
to fear that the reformers might continue too far. 39 At any rate the
Supplices and the Eumenides confirm that the powers of the demos and the
position of the Areopagus in the state were serious issues at the time.
Ephialtes and his supporters were also hostile to Sparta, and they may
have been provoked by particular decisions of the Areopagus in favour
of their opponents, but they did genuinely come to think that the state
ought to be run on more democratic lines; we may believe Plutarch when
he says that Cimon was ostracized both because he was philolakon and
because he was misodemos. The word demokratia may well have been
coined at this time, 40 and Ephialtes may have moved the axones on which
the laws of Draco and Solon were inscribed from the Acropolis to the
new Stoa of the Basileus in the Agora, to symbolize the transfer to the
people of the control of the state. 41

39 Cf. Dodds 1953 (j 27) 19-20 and i960 (j 28)= 1973 (j 29), 45-63; contra Dover 1957 (j
30)= 1987 (a 26) 161—75), Macleod 1982 (j 74) 124—33 (* 1 98 3 (a 82) 20-9); forPodlecki 1966(3 87)
80-100, Aeschylus approved of Ephialtes’ reform but feared further reform by Pericles.

40 Notice Bratov uparovaa x^P in Aesch. Suppl. 604, and the name Democrates given to an
Athenian born c. 4 70-460 (Davies 1971 (l 27) 359-60, cf. Stroud 1984(0 168)). Against the view that
the word was not adopted until late in the fifth century, see Hansen 1986 (a 57). Earlier, demos and
kratoshzd been combined in the Great Rhetra at Sparta (Plut. L yc. 6.2, Tyrt. fr. 4.9 West; cf. CAH
ill 2 . 1, 740-1).

41 According to Anaximenes (FGrH 72 F 13), Ephialtes moved the axones and the kyrbeis to the
bouleuterion and the Agora; Poll. vm. 1 28 substitutes the prytaneion ( where these objects were certainly
to be found later) for the bouleuterion. It has often been thought that this was merely a metaphorical

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THE REFORM OF THE AREOPAGUS

On his return from Messenia Cimon tried to upset the reform, but he
was unsuccessful and was ostracized (Plut. Cim. 15.3—5, 17.3; Per. 9.5).
The democracy had come to stay, but its enemies were not yet prepared
to accept defeat. Ephialtes himself was murdered: the orator Antiphon
cited this as an instance of an unsolved crime (v. Caed. Her. 68);
Idomeneus alleged that Pericles killed him out of envy ( FGrH 338 f 8,
ap. Plut. Per. 10.7), but Ath. Pol. says that the killer was Aristodicus of
Tanagra (25.4); either this last was an unconfirmed rumour or it was
known that Aristodicus was the actual killer and assumed that some
Athenian must have instigated him. The Eumenides in 458 shows a fear of
civil war (cf. above), and at the time of the battle of Tanagra, perhaps in
the following year, 42 there were rumours of a pro-Spartan oligarchic plot
(Thuc. 1.107.4, 6). Plutarch tells the story that Cimon was anxious to
return and fight on the Athenian side at Tanagra and was forbidden to do
so, but his friends fought and died in the battle, and afterwards he was
recalled on the proposal of Pericles (Cim. 17.4—7; Per. 10. 1—3). We may
accept that Cimon was not willing to do as Isagoras had done fifty years
earlier and invoke Spartan help against his political opponents, but
probably he was not recalled at the time of Tanagra and did not return to
Athens until the end of his ten years of exile, though perhaps then he was
not simply allowed to return but was positively recalled. 43

Ath. Pol. 26.2-4 chronicles three laws of the 450s: in 457/6 (or in the
previous year, to take effect in that year) the archonship was opened to
the % eugitai , the third of the four property classes; in 453/2 the thirty
travelling magistrates, dikastai kata demous (an institution of the tyranny,
not then necessarily numbering thirty: Ath. Pol. 16.5) were revived; in
451/0 a law of Pericles limited citizenship to men who had Athenian
mothers as well as Athenian fathers. Another law of Pericles is men-
tioned in 27.3-4: to rival Cimon’s generosity from his own resources
Pericles used the resources of the state to provide payment for jurors in
the dikasteria. These laws completed the democracy established by the
reform of the Areopagus. The first of them marks the penultimate stage
in the process by which the archons came to be thought of as routine
officials, with duties which any loyal citizen could be trusted to perform:
as for most offices, all but the members of the lowest class were now

way of saying that Ephialtes placed the control of the state in the hands of the people (Wilamowitz
1 893 (a 125) 1 45 n. 7). If the Stoa of the Basileus was built in the second quarter of the fifth century,
as proposed by Thompson 1981 (1 165) 345-6, it may be that the axones of Draco and Solon were
moved from the Acropolis to the Stoa by Ephialtes and from the Stoa to the prjtaneion on the
publication of the new code of laws at the end of the fifth century, and that Ephialtes’ act was
intended to have the metaphorical significance detected by Wilamowitz.

42 But see pp. 113-15, 501, placing it in the same year.

43 However, the story that Cimon was recalled early is found also in Theopompus, FGrH 1 1 5 f
88; and Gomme, HCT 1 326-7 , argued strongly that in the absence of good conflicting evidence it
should be believed. Unz 1986 (b 16) 76-82 accepts it and argues for a revised chronology.

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4 . THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

eligible; for a while appointment continued to be by klerosis ek prokriton,
but by the time of Ath. Pol. this had given way to a two-stage allotment
(8. 1). Dikastai kata demous and payment for jurors are both responses to
the development of the dikasteria, which Ephialtes’ reform had aided;
judicial business formerly handled by the Areopagus was now handled
by organs of the demos , and it will have been necessary for him to divide
the heliaia into separate dikasteria and to standardize the new procedure
by which one of the archons after a preliminary enquiry referred suits to a
dikasterion, if this had not already been done. Dikastai kata demous
probably decided minor private suits in which the sum at issue was not
more than 10 drachmae (cf. Ath. Pol. 55.2): such suits would often be
between near neighbours, and in this way litigation would be made
easier and pressure on the dikasteria would be relieved. Payment for
jurors (at first, probably 2 obols a day 44 ) enabled the poorer citizens to
play their part in the judicial process and allowed the formation of the
large juries, representative of the demos , which the Athenians preferred.
If the story of a political manoeuvre against Cimon is pressed, this
measure must be assigned to a time when he was in Athens, but more
probably we should conclude only that the payment was introduced
during his lifetime, and date it shortly after Ephialtes’ reform. 45

Pericles’ citizenship law requires more discussion. The only explan-
ation given in an ancient text is ‘because of the number of the citizens’
{Ath. Pol. 26. 4); 46 but that will certainly not explain the re-enactment of
the law in 403/2, after the losses of the Peloponnesian War; and if, as
seems likely, bastards were never legally entitled to Athenian citizen-
ship, 47 the effect of the law will have been to limit citizens in their choice
of wives but not to limit the number of citizen sons born to citizen
fathers. 48 Distinguished citizens with foreign mothers had included
Cleisthenes and Themistocles, and currently included Cimon. It has been
suggested that the law was a party-political manoeuvre against Cimon,
but there is no indication that the law was made retrospective, and
almost certainly Cimon held his last Athenian command (Thuc. 1.1 12.2-
4) after the law had been enacted. 49 Rich aristocrats were more likely than

44 Schol. Ar. Wasps 300, cf. 88 (emended).

45 Hignett 1952 (d 38) 342-3, contra Wade-Gery 1938 (c 104) 131-4= 1958 (a 121) 235-8.

46 Arist. Pol. m, 1 278326—34 remarks that when democracies are short of ‘legitimate’ citizens they
adopt generous criteria for citizenship, but as they come to have an ample supply of common people
( ochlos ) they adopt increasingly strict criteria.

47 Lacey 1968 (l 90) 282 n. 15; Humphreys 1974 (l 73); Rhodes 1978 (l 120); contra Harrison
1968—71 (a 59) 1 63—5; MacDowell 1976 (l 97).

48 Hignett 1952 (d 38) 346.

49 Hignett op. cit. 345, contra Jacoby, FCrH nib suppl. i 477-81; for Cimon’s last command cf.
p. 54 (Meiggs 1963 (e 5 2) 13, believing that Cimon was recalled from ostracism slightly early, placed
his death in Cyprus before the enactment of the law; same chronology in Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3) in,
125, 422—3, 456-7, but see Chronological Notes, pp. 501—2).

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PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY

poor commoners to bring foreign wives back to Athens; but in the mid-
fifth century more Athenians were going abroad than earlier, and also
foreigners were probably coming to Athens as metics in large numbers,
and their daughters were as accessible to the poor as to the rich. We may
guess that mixed marriages had been accepted when they were few and
illustrious, but were incurring disapproval as they became more fre-
quent: Athens and her democracy were flourishing, and membership of
the citizen body should be limited to those who were entitled to it by
their Athenian origins. In 445 / 4 Psammetichus of Egypt sent a consign-
ment of corn to Athens, which was distributed among the citizens; the
gift provoked a check on the registers of citizens, and it is implausibly
alleged that as many as 4,760 from a total of 19,000 were deleted
(Philochorus, FGrH 328 f i 19). We need not follow Plutarch (Per. 37.4)
in linking this check with Pericles’ law, 50 but it reflects the same attitude,
that only those with a good claim to them should enjoy the benefits of
Athenian citizenship: there is nothing incompatible with democracy in
the law. 51

III. PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY

The core of the Athenian state was the Athenian demos , the body of
Athenian citizens, and under the democracy the state was run by, and for
the benefit of, the demos. In the making of decisions all citizens were
involved together: the one sovereign body was the ekklesia, the
Assembly which consisted in theory of all adult male citizens. In the
carrying-out of decisions all could not be involved together but all could
be involved in turn: administration was based on a large number of
boards with limited duties, and no man could hold any one civilian office
for more than one year. Most of the more important lawsuits were
referred to a dikasterion after preliminary enquiry by a magistrate: the
juries in these courts were large, and as subdivisions of Solon’s heliaia
were regarded as representative of the demos.

It was the Assembly which enacted laws, imposed taxes and spent the
proceeds of them, made alliances and declared peace and war. Any
citizen present could speak in the debate, or put forward an amendment
to a proposal already before the Assembly, or make a new proposal

50 Hignctt loc. cit.

51 Patterson 1981 (d 65) argues that before 45 1/0 there was no law laying down the qualification
for registration as a citizen, which I think possible, and that many men of non-Athenian birth on
both sides had been registered, which I doubt. Walters 1983 (l 139) argues that bastards were not
ipso facto excluded from citizenship and that the purpose of the law was to exclude the sons of citizens
by slave women. Humphreys 1977/8 (d 39) 99= 1983 (a 67) 24, sees the law's purpose as ‘to prevent
families based on international dynastic marriages from using their private relationships to
manipulate foreign policy’. See also pp. 292, 299.

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4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

himself. The most important restriction of the Assembly’s powers of
decision lay in the principle of probouleusis (advance deliberation). 52 In
Athens as in other Greek cities of varying political complexion the
Assembly worked in conjunction with a smaller Council (the boule )
which gave prior consideration to its business; cities differed in the
extent to which they allowed the Council to decide matters without
reference to the Assembly, and in the degree of freedom which they gave
the Assembly to debate matters which were referred to it; 53 in democratic
Athens all major and many subsidiary decisions were taken by the
Assembly, and the restriction of the Assembly’s freedom was minimal.
The rule of probouleusis was formulated, ‘It is not permitted to the demos to
decree anything which has not been given prior consideration by the
Council and has not been put to it by the prytaneis’ ( Ath . Pol. 45 .4), and all
that was forbidden by this was the taking of a positive decision on a
subject not referred to the Assembly by the Council. The Council might
make a recommendation of its own, in which case the Assembly was free
to adopt it or amend it or reject it and adopt an alternative proposal; or it
might decline to offer a recommendation, and simply invite the
Assembly to debate a subject and make up its own mind, in which case
proposals would have to be made in the Assembly; our evidence
suggests that in the fifth and fourth centuries both bodies took their
duties seriously. If a matter was raised in debate which the chairmen were
not prepared to accept as covered by the Council’s probouleuma (memor-
andum to the Assembly), the Assembly could call for a proposal to be
presented to a subsequent meeting: in the fifth century ad hoc drafting
committees ( syngrapheis ) were sometimes appointed to present proposals
through the Council; such committees prepared the way for the
oligarchies of 411 and 404, so this practice was abandoned, and in the
fourth century the Council itself was commissioned to draw up
proposals.

Some other limitations on its power were normally accepted by the
Assembly, but might fail to work on the occasions when they were most
needed (the Assembly which set up the oligarchy in 41 1 began by
suspending all the normal safeguards against hasty decision; 54 in the
‘trial’ of the generals after Arginusae the prytaneis tried to enforce the
normal rules of procedure, but ‘the mass shouted out that it would be a
terrible thing if any one prevented the demos from doing what it wanted’
Xen. Hell. 1.7. 12 55 ). By 415 there existed the possibility of prosecuting
the author of a decree and invalidating the decree through a graphe
paranomon. ib On some occasions the demos voted that a question might

52 On the working of probouleusis in Athens, see Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 52—81.

53 Cf. below, pp. 92—3. 54 Cf. below, p. 475. 55 Cf. below, p. 493.

56 Cf. pp. 70-2 withnn. 28, 32.

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PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY

not be raised without a previous vote of immunity ( adeia ), so that a
decision could not be taken at a single meeting of the Assembly, but one
meeting would have to vote the immunity and a second to take the
substantive decision. 57 Some important decisions, like that on Corinth
and Corcyra in 43 3, 58 were spread over two days, so that the people
should hear the arguments on the first day and return to vote on the
second (Thuc. 1.44.1); but there seem to have been no precautions to
ensure that only those who had heard the arguments took part in the
vote.

In the fourth century there were four regular Assemblies in each of the
ten prytanies of the year, one of the four being designated ‘principal’
( kyria ) (Ath. Pol. 43.4—6): probably there was a time when the kyriai
ekklesiai were the only regular Assemblies, and we may guess that the
others were added between Ephialtes’ reform and the end of the fifth
century. For a tenth of the year at a time the fifty councillors of one tribe
served as the prytaneis, the standing committee of the Council and the
joint chairmen of the Council and Assembly; each day one of their
number was picked by lot to serve as president. The mechanism was
available from the time of Cleisthenes’ creation of the ten tribes, but
before Ephialtes’ reform there is no clear evidence for these prytaneis, and
probably the Council was not busy enough to need a standing com-
mittee, so we should perhaps attribute the institution of the prytaneis to
Ephialtes 59 and suppose that previously the nine archons had presided. 60
Decisions in the Assembly were taken by a simple majority. On some
motions, particularly some affecting a named individual, voting was by
ballot and a quorum of 6,000 was required; 61 the latter requirement
suggests that attendance in excess of 6,000 was possible but was not
always achieved. 62 On other motions the Assembly voted by show of
hands: many votes might be needed in the course of a meeting, and it is
likely that an exact count was not attempted but if a vote did not produce
an unchallenged majority the vote was repeated. 63

The regular meeting-place of the Assembly was the Pnyx (south west
of the Agora, west of the Acropolis); the earliest work there is dated to
the end of the sixth century, and the site was remodelled at the end of the
fifth century and again in the fourth. 64 The Council had its headquarters
in the Agora (see below, Fig. 27): originally the excavators dated the
council chamber ( bouleuterion ) c. 500 and the round house ( tbolos ) which
was used by the prytaneis in the second quarter of the fifth century, 65 and

57 E.g. M-L 58 — IG i 3 52.1 5-19. 58 Cf. below, p. 574.

59 Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 16-19. 60 Hignett 1952 (d 58) 74, 92, 98-9, 1 50-1.

61 Cf. law ap. Andoc. 1.87 and the rule concerning ostracism as formulated by Plut. Arist. 7.6.

62 On the population of Athens see below, p. 85. 63 Hansen 1977 (d 31).

64 Cf. Travlos 1971 (t 171) 466-76, where detailed discussions are cited.

65 Travlos *971 (1 1 71) 191-5, 555-61; Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 20, 25-46.

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4. THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

it was possible to link the first with Cleisthenes and the second with
Ephialtes ; 66 but the appearance of re-used material in the bouleuterion is an
embarrassment, and may indicate that that too should be dated to the
second quarter of the fifth century . 67 At any rate, the buildings of the
Council and Assembly belong to the half-century from Cleisthenes to
Ephialtes.

If the Assembly was to discharge its duty responsibly it had to be kept
informed. Documents could not be reproduced in large numbers, as they
are in the modern world, and an important official of the Athenian state
(who was considered to require special skill, and was therefore
appointed not by lot but by election) was the secretary, who read
documents aloud at meetings of the Council and Assembly (. Ath . Pol.
54.5, cf. Thuc. vn. 10). Before and after meetings, though documents
could not be sent to the citizens, the citizens could go to the documents:
more than any other Greek state, Athens took to inscribing, on stone,
decrees of the Assembly, accounts of public expenditure and a wide
range of official documents; publication on a large scale seems to have
begun shortly after Ephialtes’ reform, presumably by a deliberate
decision of the new democracy. As has been mentioned, business for the
Assembly was prepared by the Council, and the way in which the
Council came to act as supervisor of the state’s administration (see
below) ensured that it was well informed on the day-to-day working of
Athens. The Assembly was helped also by the fact that its members were
not utter laymen: many of those who attended were holding some state
appointment in the current year, and many more had done so in a recent
year.

Greek cities had no professional civil service, and in democratic
Athens much of the city’s administration was entrusted to committees of
citizens, usually comprising one man from each of the ten tribes. This
may be illustrated from the organization of Athenian finance. The
collection of a tax will have been put up for auction among rival
syndicates of tax-farmers, and the contract for the year awarded to the
syndicate which offered the highest yield, by the poletai (sellers) in the
presence of the Council; the Council kept a record of the contract, with
the amount due and the date fixed for payment; a few public slaves
( demosioi ) were available for mechanical tasks of that kind {Ath. Pol.
47.2—3). On the day appointed the money was paid to the apodektai
(receivers) and the record of the contract was cancelled, again in the
presence of the Council {Ath. Pol. 47.5—48.1); defaulters were pursued
by the Council through another committee, the praktores (exacters) (law
ap. Andoc. 1. Mjst. 77). In the fifth century, state revenue was paid by the

66 Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 30-1, 1 8-19 (using this to support the attribution of pry taneis to Ephialtes).

67 This date preferred by Thompson 1981 (i 165) 345-6.

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PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY 8l

apodektai into a central treasury, and all expenditure from the treasury
had to be authorized (either as a single or as a recurrent payment) by the
Assembly; 68 the paying officers were the kolakretai (an ancient title,
meaning literally ‘ham-collectors’), and it has been argued that these,
presumably because they were the most strongly tempted to embezzle-
ment, held office not for a whole year but only for one prytany. 69 The
work of the various committees was held together through the super-
vision of the Council (cf. Ath. Pol. 45 .2, 47.1, 49.5): in the financial realm
this supervision covered not only the secular officials but also the
treasurers of Athena and other sacred treasurers (cf. Ath. Pol. 47.1), and
the taktai (assessors: IG i 3 71 = M— L 69, 8—26) who assessed and the
hellenotamiai (treasurers of the Greeks: IG i 3 34 = M-L 46, 16-22) who
received and disbursed the tribute of the Delian League. The tribute was
spent on ships for the Athenian fleet, and on payment to soldiers and
sailors who were engaged in the League’s wars; in the 440s and 430s
tribute which was surplus to these requirements was spent on public
buildings in Athens and Attica; 70 and Athens’ position as capital of the
League meant that citizens of member states had for various reasons to
visit Athens and contribute to Athenian taxes and to the wealth of the
Athenians. 71

The state had a large number of officials - a passage in Ath. Pol. refers
plausibly to 700 internal and (700, but this repetition of the number is a
corruption) overseas officials in the fifth century (24. 3) - and in addition
the tribes, trittyes and demes, and other organizations within the
Athenian state, had officials of their own. Almost all of the state’s regular
civilian appointments were made by lot, and could be held only for one
year in a man’s life; the Council of Five Hundred was likewise appointed
by lot; in the fourth century men were allowed to serve twice as
councillors, and some repetition is likely to have been needed at the
beginning of the fifth century, but this concession may not have been
necessary in the time of Pericles. 72 For this system to work, a large
number of men had to be able and willing to devote some of their time to
public service: payment for jurors (cf. above, pp. 75-6) was probably the
first instance of payment to civilians to compensate for loss of earnings
while engaged in public business; in due course payments for the various
officials and committees were introduced; 73 the culmination was reached
in the 390s, with payment for attendance at the Assembly {Ath. Pol. 41.3,
cf. Ar. Eccl. 186-8, 289-3 1 1, 392). The philosophy behind this practice

68 In the fourth century there was a regular allocation (mcrismos) of fixed sums of money to
separate spending authorities: Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 99-101, 1979/80 (d 78) 310-1 1.

69 Wilhelm 1939(0 179). 70 Cf. p. 126. 71 Cf. pp. 307-12.

72 Rhodes 1980 (a 103) 193-^.

73 One motive for the oligarchic revolution of 4 1 1 was a desire to save money by abolishing these
civilian stipends: see below, p. 473.

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4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

was that all should play their part in the running of the state: not all will
have been good administrators, but the work was simple and the scope
for incompetence limited, and although each year each official was new
to his current post most will have been men who had held other posts in
the public service in previous years. Public appointments were not,
however, open to all adult male citizens: men under thirty were ineligible
(cf. Ath. Pol. 63.3, on jurors), and so too were the members of the lowest
property class, the thetes { Ath . Pol. 7.3—4).

The Council acquired not only administrative functions but judicial
functions to reinforce them {Ath. Pol. 45.2). In the modern world, where
the power of the state over the individual is large, it seems important that
the courts should be independent of the other organs of the state and so
able to insist that even the state must abide by the laws, but in the Greek
world the power of the state was much less; in fifth-century Athens an
opposition between the polis and the individual citizens who comprised
the polis would scarcely have been intelligible, and the distinction
between the laws and what the demos currently wanted had yet to be
drawn. The Council was involved also, after Ephialtes’ reform, in the
trial of eisangeliai, charges of major offences against the state. Apart from
the jurisdiction of the Council, most public lawsuits (on charges on
which any citizen might prosecute), and private suits where the sum at
issue was more than 10 drachmae, 74 now came after a preliminary
enquiry by a magistrate to one of the dikasteria into which Solon’s heliaia
was divided: juries were of some hundreds, or even thousands, and the
total list of registered jurors ran to 6,000 (Ar. Wasps 661-2, Ath. Pol.
24.3); men under thirty were excluded, but thetes were not. In dispensing
justice as in administration the Athenians did not set a high value on
expertise: litigants were expected to plead their own cases; in due course
professional speech-writers are found, but not specialists in the law as
such. There were no regular public prosecutors: the Council might
uncover offences in the course of its administrative work (cf. Ant. vi.
Chor. 49), and sometimes, as for the trial of Cimon (p. 68), prosecutors
might be elected; but usually it was left to ‘whoever wished’ {ho
boulomenos) to initiate a public lawsuit, and malicious prosecutors called
sykopbantai , 75 who made a practice of prosecuting in order to obtain the
rewards offered to those who won their cases, were a well-known evil in
Athens (e.g. Ar. Ach. 898-928). Litigants swore to keep to the point at
issue {Ath. Pol. 67.1), and jurors swore to make their decision on the
point at issue (oath ap. Dem. xxiv. Tim. 151), but it is clear from
surviving speeches that the Athenian courts did not in fact observe strict

74 The lesser private suits were judged by the dikastai kata demotes: cf. pp. 75-6.

75 Literally, ‘fig-exposers’: perhaps originally, as in Ar. Ach. 818—28, 904-28, denouncers of
contraband imports.

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PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY

standards of relevance: the courts were cross-sections of the Athenian
demos, expressing the will of the demos with regard to the contestants
appearing before them.

The body which met in the Assembly, and which supplied councillors
and other officials, and jurors, was not the whole population of Athens
but the Athenian demos, the adult male citizens. The exclusion of children
from political power is still accepted in our own century; the exclusion of
women was accepted for a long time but is not today. But even if we
include women and children, as citizens in a wider sense, citizens were a
far lower proportion of the total population in Attica than they are in a
modern state. The demos could and sometimes did confer citizenship on a
foreigner, but there was no general right to acquire citizenship by place
of birth or by migration, and Pericles’ law of 45 1/0, requiring a citizen
mother as well as a citizen father, defined the entitlement to citizenship
more strictly than before (see pp. 75-7). There were many non-citizens
living in Attica, some as long-term visitors, others as permanent
residents: they had to register as metoikoi\ they had military and fiscal
obligations; they had no political rights, and only such rights at law as
the citizens chose to allow them. Metics, though not citizens, were still
free men and women; many other inhabitants were unfree. Slaves, who
were the property of their masters, to be treated almost entirely as their
masters wished, were present in large numbers. The Athenian citizens
were not parasitic on their metics and slaves to the same extent as the
Spartiate citizens were parasitic on their perioikoi and helots 76 - many
citizens worked on their own land or in their own workshops, often with
the help of slaves - but the large-scale participation by the citizens in the
running of the state was possible partly because they were not the whole
population, but there was an unleisured class of non-citizens which did
not share in political activity. Figures are hard to come by for citizens and
even harder for non-citizens; but at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War the total population perhaps numbered about 300,000, comprising
100,000 or more slaves, somewhat under 50,000 members of metic
families and somewhat over 1 50,000 members of citizen families; of these
last, 45,000, 1 5 per cent of the population, were adult male citizens, and
1 7 ,000, under 6 per cent of the population, were citizens over thirty years
old in the three highest property classes, eligible to hold office. 77

Apart from its use to denote the demes, the smallest units in
Cleisthenes’ organization, the word demos can refer either to the whole
citizen body or to the mass of ordinary citizens as opposed to the rich and

™ Cf. CAH iii 2 .i, 742 - 4 .

77 These approximations are based on the estimates of Gomme 19}} (a 48), Ehrenberg 1969 (a
55 ) but arguments for rather higher citizen numbers are advanced by Rhodes 1988 (c 84) 271-
7, while Duncan-Joncs 1980 (a jo) has argued for considerably higher metic numbers.

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8 4

4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

aristocratic: in Pericles’ funeral oration the Athenian democracy is
described as a constitution in which all citizens have the opportunity to
display their merits in the service of the state (Thuc. 11.37. i), while
pseudo-Xenophon’s Athenaion Politeia represents it as rule by the lower
classes in their own interests (1.2—9); Aristotle, trying to define democ-
racy, began by regarding it as a constitution in which power resides not
with one or a few but with many, but added that in fact it is the rule of the
poor (Pol. hi, 1279322— i28oa6). In appointment to office, the Athenian
democracy retained some bias in favour of the rich: the poorest citizens
were officially ineligible, and despite the provision of stipends the
poorest of those who remained will probably have found it less easy than
the richer to entrust their private concerns to others and devote their
time to the service of the state. The poorest citizens were not excluded
from the Assembly, and distance was more likely than poverty to keep
men away from its meetings (Marathon is 37 km from Athens by the
shortest route, 42 km by the easiest): if the Assembly had divided on class
lines the poor could regularly have outvoted the rich, but there is no
evidence that this occurred. There is some evidence for opposition of
rich and poor in the law courts: the stipend paid to jurors will have
appealed to those who would otherwise have had difficulty in earning
their living, though not to the hard-working; if the state was short of
money the stipends could not be paid and the courts would not sit; 78 and
when a rich man was on trial the argument might be used that continuing
payment of the stipends depended on a vote of condemnation. 79

We do not know when the property tax called eisphora , first mentioned
in 434/3 ( IG I 3 5 2 = M— L 5 8 bi 5— 19), was introduced or first collected;
most other taxes were indirect taxes, so that the amount which a man
paid depended on his consumption rather than his wealth. The rich were
called on to make further contributions to the state through the system
of liturgies, acting as choregoi to train and finance a chorus in a festival or
as trierarchs to command and finance a trireme in the navy. This system
involved the payer in the life of the community, as the collection and
expenditure of taxes by government agents does not; it also provided the
rich payers with opportunities for competition and display, and we see
from law-court speeches that men took pride in performing more
liturgies, more expensively, than was actually required of them, and
expected these services to be remembered to their credit when they were
under attack. 80

Any community needs leaders, though in Athens, where the compo-

78 Dem. xxxix. 17, cf. xxiv.99, XLV.4.

79 Ar. Knigbts 1557-61, cf. Wasps 500-6, Lys. xix.n, xxvii.i, xxx.22, Hyp. iv.52— 7.

80 E.g. Lys. xix. 29, 42—5, xxi. 1-5, 1 1— 12, xxv.12— 15; Dem. xix.282. Aristotle, Pol. v, 1509317-
20, vi, 1 5 20b 5— 4, expresses disapproval of ostentatious but useless liturgies.

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PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY

sition of the Assembly changed from meeting to meeting and that of the
Council changed from year to year, it was harder for even the most
popular leader to pursue a coherent policy than in a modern parliamen-
tary system. Thucydides writes that Periclean Athens was ‘in name
democracy but in fact rule by the first man’ (11.65.9); Plutarch, over-
simplifying, writes that ‘for forty years Pericles was a leader together
with men like Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides and
Thucydides, but after the defeat and ostracism of Thucydides [r. 443]®’
he acquired for not less than fifteen years a continuous and single rule
and predominance in his yearly generalships’ (Per. 16.3). By the middle
of the fifth century the decline of the archonships to routine offices,
concerned largely with festivals and the machinery of justice, was
complete; owing partly, no doubt, to the achievements of Cimon as
general in command of the forces of Athens and the Delian League, the
generals had become not only the commanders of the army and navy but
also the political leaders of Athens. Whereas nearly all civilian officials
were appointed by lot, and could not be reappointed, to posts which
were thought to require loyalty rather than ability, it was recognized that
generals and other military officials did require ability, and so these were
appointed by election and could be reappointed as often as the demos
chose to re-elect them (cf. Ath. Pol. 43.1, 61.1). Thus in the Periclean
period the people elected their leaders: appointment as general was at the
same time an acknowledgement of a man’s predominance and a means of
exercising and maintaining that predominance.

Constitutionally the generals were executive officers, given particular
tasks by the people, inevitably allowed some discretion in the field but
ultimately answerable to the people for the performance of those tasks.
When they combined with the Council and other officials to swear to a
treaty or to protect an honorand, this was a recognition of their
importance in the state. Evidence that they had a privileged consti-
tutional position and could require an Assembly to be called or not is
limited to the period of the Peloponnesian War, but the Assembly would
inevitably pay more attention to a proposal from a general or from the
board of generals than to one from a private citizen or a group of private
citizens: 82 the age of the politician as rhetor (speaker), a man who
regularly spoke in the Assembly but did not regularly hold office, was
still in the future. 83

Like most Athenian boards, the generals were ten in number.
Originally they had been elected, by the Assembly, one from each tribe
(Ath. Pol. 22.2), and if Plutarch may be trusted that was still true of the
generals of 469/8 (Cim. 8.8); by the time of Ath. Pol. they were elected
irrespective of tribe (6 1 . 1), and our incomplete knowledge of the fourth-

81 Cf. p. 141. 82 Rhodes 1972 (d 75) 43-6. 83 Cf. pp. 404-5, 417.

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4 . THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

century generals suggests that this was not yet true of the generals of
3 5 7/6. 84 A fragment of Androtion ( FGrH 324 f 38), purporting to list
the ten generals of 44 1 jo, seems to list eleven and certainly includes both
Pericles and one other member of his tribe, and in some later years
Pericles again had a colleague in his own tribe. Two of the generals of
3 5 7/6 were from the same tribe: almost all scholars have been convinced
that in the second half of the fifth century and the first half of the fourth
there was a method of appointment intermediate between the two
mentioned by Ath. Pol., retaining the basic principle of one general from
each tribe but allowing at any rate one exception and possibly more than
one. 85 How and why these exceptions were provided for has been
endlessly discussed; the most helpful approach is one which starts by
asking how elections in the Assembly are likely to have been con-
ducted. 86 The Assembly voted in elections as in most other matters by
show of hands, and probably a precise count of votes was not made
(p. 79): if there were several candidates for the first tribe’s generalship,
the presiding officers (probably) would not count the votes in favour of
each but would take each candidate in turn and invite votes for and votes
against him; the first candidate who had a majority of votes in his favour
would be declared elected. If the voters knew before they started voting
who all the candidates in the tribe were, and understood that it would
prejudice the chances of the candidate whom they preferred to give a
favourable vote to any other candidate, it ought never to have been the
case that, for instance, the second candidate was elected by a small
majority but continuing the voting would have yielded a larger majority
for the third. On the other hand, it might well happen that in one tribe
none of the candidates secured a favourable majority: in that case, before
the modification was introduced, a second vote would have been taken
on the candidates in that tribe; afterwards, when the first vote had been
completed, places left unfilled would be offered in the second vote to all
surviving candidates irrespective of tribe. The appearance of two
generals from one tribe will thus be a sign that in the first vote none of the
candidates in one other tribe secured a majority. Certainly the ten

84 In 3 5 7/6 eight of the generals were from seven different tribes ( 1G it 2 124 = Tod, GHI 153.20-
4): it is possible that Chares should not be restored as the second name (Chabrias may have been
accidentally inscribed twice and therefore deleted once), but Chares was a general in 357/6 even if he
was not included in that list; see Develin 1989(0 20) 275-6; it used to be held that in 323/2 four of the
six generals whom we know were from the same tribe (Sundwall 1906 (l i 30) 23-4), and if that were
true it would support Atb. Pol. 6 1.1, but later prosopographical work has reduced them to two
(Develin 1989 (o 20) 408; I count his ‘nauarchos’ as a general).

85 Contra Fornara 1971 (d 29), especially 19-27, arguing that the tribal basis of appointments was
wholly abandoned in the late 460s; but if that were so we should expect to find more exceptions than
are reliably attested, and Hansen 1988 (d 35) points out that a (modified) tribal basis for 360 is
confirmed by P. Oxj. 1804, fr. iv. 4-6.

86 Pierart 1974 (d 67), cf. Rhodes 1981 (C83) 129-32, Hansen 1983 (d 34) 119-21. References to
other discussions may be found in Fornara 1971 (d 29).

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THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

generals remained constitutionally equal, and it is wrong to suppose that
one of the ten was elected in a special way to a position of special
authority. 87

Pericles, though a leader of the democrats, was both rich and
aristocratic. It was easier for the rich than for the poor to devote their
time to political activity, and nearly all politicians were rich men. Of
those mentioned with Pericles in Plut. Per. 16.3 (p. 85), Cimon and his
relative Thucydides were aristocratic; we do not know the families of the
others. Our sources suggest that Cleon, in the generation after Pericles,
was the first of a new kind of politician, vulgar both in origin and in
manner (e.g. Ath. Pol. 28.1—3), while after Pericles’ death few men from
the old aristocracy were active in politics. 88 It should not surprise us that
the first leaders of the democracy were from families with a long
tradition of political activity, but the democracy encouraged men from
other families to try to rise to prominence, and as they succeeded the
democracy in these new hands came to have less attraction for the
aristocrats.

IV. THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

Athens, as we have seen, was the paradigm of a democratic state; Pericles
is represented as saying in his funeral oration, ‘We ourselves are an
example, rather than imitators of others’ (Thuc. 11.37.1). All adult males
of Athenian descent were citizens, entitled to attend, speak and vote at
the Assembly, which was the sovereign decision-making body. All
citizens over thirty were entitled to sit on the juries, which expressed the
will of the people in the more important lawsuits. All citizens over thirty
except those in the lowest of the four property classes were entitled to sit
in the Council and to hold most of the offices of state, and the offices were
so numerous that unless most of these citizens had been willing to
exercise their rights the mechanism of government would have ground
to a halt. Payment for the performance of a citizen’s civilian duties, to
some extent made possible by the revenue which Athens derived directly
from her empire, and by the prosperity which she enjoyed as head of that
empire, enabled even the poorer citizens to devote time to public affairs.

The final achievement of this democracy was the deliberate work of
Ephialtes and his associates. Only 160 years before Ephialtes’ reform,
Athens was still without written laws; the basileus was no longer a king
but one of a college of nine annual archons; a single state had come to
control the whole of Attica; but in other respects there had been little
development from the primitive Athens of the dark age. The state was

87 This was demonstrated by Dover i960 (d 21) { contra Beloch 1884 (d 5) 274-88).

88 Cf. pp. 404-5-

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88 4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

governed by the Eupatrid aristocracy, whose members provided the
archons and other officials, whose memories preserved the laws and
traditions of Athens; probably all native Athenian adult males were
citizens, and could attend the Assembly, but the Assembly met rarely and
transacted little business, and without the courage of a Thersites (Horn.
II. ii. 2 1 1— 77) the ordinary citizen would not venture to speak. Many of
the citizens, indeed, were less than free men: as hektemoroi they had to
surrender to an overlord one-sixth of the produce of their land, and they
were no doubt expected to be subservient to him in other ways too. In
other cities, farther south, there had recently been revolutions in which
aristocracies had been overthrown and tyrannies had been established;
but when Cylon had tried to make himself tyrant in Athens the attempt
had failed. 89

Draco’s production of a written code of laws, in 621/0, marked the
first step from the primitive aristocracy towards the classical democracy:
knowledge of the laws no longer depended on the memory of the ruling
families but was accessible to all; procedures for remedying wrongs were
publicly defined. 90 Several further steps were taken by Solon, in 594/3:
his three most democratic measures, according to Ath. Pol. 9. 1 , were (the
liberation of the hektemoroi and) the ban on enslavement for debt,
abolishing the distinction within the citizen body between overlords and
underlings; the provision for whoever wished {ho boulomertos) to prose-
cute in ‘public’ lawsuits, offering a chance of justice to those who were
unable or afraid to prosecute on their own account; and the institution of
the heliaia, the judicial session of the Assembly to which litigants might
appeal if they were dissatisfied with a magistrate’s verdict. Other
measures deserve emphasis also: the use of wealth as the sole qualifica-
tion for office, so that the old, closed aristocracy would in time be
replaced by a new, open class of office-holders; the institution of a new
Council, immediately independent of the old aristocracy, to prepare
business for the Assembly, and (we may guess) coupled with this a
guarantee of regular meetings for the Assembly. This was not yet
democracy, and it was not intended to be democracy — ‘I gave the demos
as much honour as is fitting for it’; ‘In this way will the demos best follow
its leaders, if it is neither unleashed too far nor constrained’ (Solon, frs.
5—6 West ap. Ath. Pol. 12. 1—2) — but Solon did attack some of the
inequalities of the primitive state, and try to establish a regime in which
each Athenian had his proper part to play. 91

Nevertheless, stasis persisted; Pisistratus tried to make himself tyrant,
and on the third occasion, in 546, he was successful. Solon’s institutions
were retained, but the tyranny had a levelling effect, since rich aristocrats
and poor commoners Were alike subject to the rulers of the state, and a
89 Cf. CAH hi 2 . 3, 568-9. 90 CAH hi 2 . 5, 570-1. 91 CAM in 2 . 5, 375—91.

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THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 89

centralizing effect, increasing the importance of Athens, where the rulers
lived, at the expense of the townships of Attica. As in other cities, in due
course the citizens became more conscious of their present subjection
than of the old grievances which had enabled the first tyrant to seize
power, and in 5 1 1/10 the Pisistratids were driven out. 92 At first the old
aristocratic rivalry was renewed, but Cleisthenes, ‘having previously
spurned the demos, then attached it entirely to his own side’ (Hdt. v.69.2),
and by so doing he not only got the better of Isagoras but obtained
enough support to defeat the Spartans when they invaded on Isagoras’
behalf. The essence of his reform was a reorganization of the citizen body
in ten new tribes, thirty trittyes and 1 39 demes; on this new structure the
whole mechanism of the classical democracy was to be built, and the
effect of the reform was to lessen the importance of the old organizations
through which the aristocrats had remained influential, and to provide
an apparatus for constitutional government at local level as well as at
polis level. ‘When this was done, the politeia became far more democratic
than that of Solon’ (. Ath . Pol. 22.1); whether that was Cleisthenes’
intention is another question, which need not be argued again here. 93

Among other things based on the ten new tribes was the organization
of the army; from 501/0 Athens had ten generals, appointed annually by
election and capable of being re-elected. The nine archons were at that
time elected (but perhaps given their particular posts within the college
by lot), but in 487/6 Solon’s method of sortition from an elected short list
was revived; the elected offices based on the new organization came to be
more important than the old offices appointed by lot. 94 Cleisthenes’
apparatus of government required a considerable amount of participa-
tion by the citizens, and as they worked the machinery the demos ‘grew in
confidence’ {Ath. Pol. 22.3, cf. 24.1). After the Persian Wars the forward-
looking Themistocles was worsted by Cimon, who built up Athens’
power in the Aegean but whose attitudes and style in domestic politics
were those of a conservative aristocrat; the Areopagus, thanks to the
decline of the archonship no longer a council of the most important men
in Athens, gave verdicts in Cimon’s favour; and so Ephialtes was
prompted to challenge the prominence of the Areopagus in the state, and
to usher in the classical democracy. For the author of the Athenaion
Politeia the development was still far from complete: further moves are
attributed to Pericles (26—7 ); 95 things became much worse with the rise
of more vulgar leaders after Pericles’ death (28); 96 at the end of the fifth
century there were two oligarchic interruptions but the democracy was
restored (29-40), 97 ‘since when it has continued to the present day,

92 Cf. CAH IV 2 501-2. 53 Cf. CAH IV 2 321-4. 94 Cf. CAH iv 2 353.

95 But on the alleged reform of the Areopagus by Pericles see above, p. 70.

96 Cf. below, p. 404. 97 Cf. below, p. 484, and CAH vi 2 ch. 2.

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90 4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

always adding to the power of the masses’ (41.2). There were changes
during the century after Pericles’ death, some of them affecting the
character of the democracy, 98 but in comparison with the earlier
constitutional changes they were minor adjustments, and we may regard
the politeia of the Periclean period as the classical form of the Athenian
democracy. Both in Aristotle’s Politics (11, 1 273133 5 — 1274321) and in Ath.
Pol. (9.2) it is insisted that Solon should not be supposed to have
intended all that was later built on his foundations; but nevertheless we
can see how the various changes briefly chronicled above contributed to
the finished product.

Why should it have been in Athens that this democracy made its
appearance? Thanks to the early synoecism of Attica, Athens was much
larger than most Greek poleis, but it was not in other respects atypical.
Though it had taken the lead at the end of the dark age, it was overtaken
during the Archaic period by the cities of the Isthmus and the
Peloponnese. The political changes which we have noticed in Athens are
paralleled in other cities. Written texts of laws were published elsewhere
(the oldest surviving law, from Dreros, in Crete, is of the second half of
the seventh century: M— L 2). Other cities experienced a transition from
aristocracy through tyranny to a more broadly based constitution
(notably Corinth, where, as in Athens, there was a reorganization of the
citizen body after the fall of the tyranny: Nic. Dam., FGrPI 90 f 60.2;
Phot., Suda, 7 ravTa oktw). Other cities had guaranteed meetings for the
citizen Assembly (e.g. Sparta, in the Great Rhetra). At the end of the
sixth century Athens was not strikingly different from other cities, but in
the first half of the fifth she developed as the others apparently did not.

The beginnings of the difference are to be sought in Cleisthenes’
organization and its consequences. Perhaps because of the sheer size of
the Athenian state, much greater than would have been approved by
fourth-century philosophers, 99 Cleisthenes’ new tribes and demes, if not
his trittyes, came to be accepted as authentic political units to an extent
which no one could have predicted; involvement in political activity at
the local level, which required comparatively little courage and effort,
gave the citizens the taste for political activity on a higher level. 100
Further contributions were made by the Persian Wars. Atb. Pol. (22.3)
links the first use of ostracism with the confidence of the demos after
Marathon, and their achievement in repelling a Persian invasion almost

98 On the democracy of the fourth century, which did not in fact grow ever more extreme, see
Rhodes 1979/80 (d 78). Koerner 1974 (d 42) stresses even more than I would Athens’ departures
from ‘democracy’ in the fourth century.

99 E.g. PI. Rep. iv, 422e~42jc, Leg. v, -j)ic-e, Arist. Eih. Nic. ix, ii7ob3o-2, Pol. vii, 132635-

b25. 100 Cf. above, p. 73.

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THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 91

unaided must have considerably enhanced the confidence of the Athe-
nian hoplites. 101 When Xerxes passed through Thermopylae the Athe-
nians evacuated Attica, an experience which will have added to their
solidarity if not to their confidence. By the time of Xerxes’ invasion
Athens had a fleet of two hundred triremes, requiring a total crew of
about 40,000 (Chalcis, with its Athenian cleruchs, manned twenty, and
the Plataeans supplied some men for the fleet at Artemisium but not at
Salamis, but most of the sailors must have been Athenian citizens).
Athens’ contribution amounted to more than half of the whole Greek
fleet; the next largest was the Corinthian contingent of forty ships; the
Aeginetans contributed thirty ships from a fleet which, if we emend 46. 1
to save Herodotus’ arithmetic, comprised forty-two in all (Hdt. viii. 1—2,
14. 1, 43— 8). 102 Salamis was as great an achievement for the Athenian
thetes as Marathon had been for the hoplites; and after the invaders had
been defeated the Athenians won further successes in the campaigns of
the Delian League. If earlier in various cities there had been a ‘hoplite
revolution’, Athens was now ripe for a ‘ thetes ’ revolution’, and the
importance of the nautikos ochlos (mass of sailors) was used to explain the
Athenian democracy by pseudo-Xenophon ( Atb . Pol. 1.2) and others
(e.g. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 27.1).

Ephialtes’ reform was not in fact a ‘ thetes ’ revolution’ (see p. 69):
probably there was no conscious opposition between hoplites and thetes
on this issue, but ordinary Athenians of both classes could respond to
proposals that the government of the state should be placed effectively in
the hands of the demos. The proposals came from above: Athens before
the reform had as broadly based a government as any other Greek city,
and we may doubt whether there was a spontaneous demand for more
power from the ordinary citizens; the democratic leaders of the first
generation were aristocrats, and it was only in the following generation
that new men rose to political prominence (cf. p. 87). The opponents of
Cimon may have been provoked by verdicts of the Areopagus in his
favour, but the Supplices of Aeschylus shows that the constitutional
principle of the power due to the demos had begun to be discussed. When
invited to take control of its own affairs, the demos accepted the
invitation.

Hitherto, the basic distinction in Greece had been between consti-
tutional governments and tyrannies; when Herodotus writes (vi.43.3)
that in 492 Mardonius deposed all the tyrants in Ionia and established
‘democracies’ in the cities, he probably does not mean that the new
constitutions were of a kind which would have been considered

101 Cf. Hdt. v.78 on the moral effect of the isegoria (freedom of speech) which followed the ending
of the tyranny. . 102 See Burn 1962 (a i i) 441-2.

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9 2 4- THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

democratic in the second half of the fifth century. The earliest sign of a
different analysis is in Pindar, Pyth. n.86-8 (written perhaps in 468' 03 ),
which distinguishes the rule of a tyrant, of ‘the turbulent army’ and of
the wise (plural). In the debate which Herodotus (111.80-4) insistently
but implausibly sets in sixth-century Persia, the rival claims of democ-
racy (the word demokratia 'vs, not used here, but the cognate verb is used in
vi. 43. 3 with reference to the debate), oligarchy and monarchy are
advanced; and from the second half of the fifth century onwards the
merits of government by the many, by the few and by a single ruler were
endlessly discussed. Although the threefold division became a standard
part of the Greek conceptual framework, there was of course a
continuous progression from the absolute rule of a small clique to a
comparatively egalitarian democracy, and not all Greeks would draw the
line between oligarchy and democracy in the same place. Pericles in his
praise of democracy in the funeral oration credits Athens with more
complete equality (of opportunity, not of achievement) than she in fact
possessed (Thuc. 11.37.1); Athenagoras championing democracy in
Syracuse speaks of a regime more like that envisaged by Solon, in which
it is the function of the wise to give counsel and of the many to listen and
judge (Thuc. vi.39), whereas Socrates claims that in Athens, on political
as opposed to technical matters, any citizen is considered equally capable
of giving good advice (PI. Prt. 319b— d). When Aristotle attempts to list
kinds of oligarchy and democracy there is no perceptible difference
between his most moderate oligarchy and his most moderate democracy,
and he adds that an oligarchic constitution can be administered in a
democratic spirit and a democratic in an oligarchic spirit {Pol. iv,
1292339—1 293334); his most extreme democracy is the kind in which the
state’s revenues allow it to make payments for public service and the
poor are enabled to exercise the rights which the constitution gives them
(1 292^4 1— 1 29331 o).

By this criterion of Aristotle the democracy of Periclean Athens,
although it retained a property qualification for office, was an extreme
democracy. We are rarely able to give a detailed account of the
government of other cities, whether they styled themselves democratic
or oligarchic, but the following may be identified as matters in which an
oligarchic state might differ from democratic Athens. All native Athe-
nian free adult males had a minimum of political rights, as members of
the Assembly and potential members of juries — whereas in the
oligarchies of 41 1— 410 and 404—403 the poorest citizens had no rights; in
federal Boeotia and in the separate cities of Boeotia there was a property
qualification for membership of the ‘four councils’ which wielded the

103 E.g. Bowra 1964 (j 9) 410. Others have argued for a date in the 470s; see especially von der
Miihll 1958 (j 79) (setting out the problems and arguing for 475), Lloyd-Jones 1973 (j 71) 117-27
(tentatively accepting Bowra’s date).

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THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

sovereign power {Hell. Oxj. 16.2); in Sparta only the bomoioi (‘equals’)
were members of the Assembly. 104 Though the Council and the
magistracies were not open to all members of the Assembly, it was the
Assembly which exercised the sovereign power in democratic Athens,
and all members could take an active part in its proceedings — while the
extreme oligarchy of summer 4 1 1 was based theoretically on a Council of
four hundred and a hoplite Assembly, but under this regime the
Assembly never met; in Sparta the most important issues, at any rate in
foreign policy, were referred to the Assembly, but the members’
freedom of debate was limited, and much of the government of the state
proceeded without reference to the Assembly. In Athens the large
number of offices, appointment to civilian offices by lot and the ban on
reappointment, and the provision of stipends for office-holders, ensured
that the constitution was ‘administered in a democratic spirit’, that
offices were not only theoretically open to but were actually held by a
high proportion of the members of the Assembly - whereas in Sparta
ephors were elected for one year from the whole Assembly and could not
be re-elected, but members of the gerousia (council of elders) were
appointed for life from a privileged group of families. 105 In the larger and
more complex states of the modern world the use of representative
institutions and of permanent civil servants means that a far lower
proportion of the citizen body is directly involved in government than in
Periclean Athens; but in modern forms of democracy a far higher
proportion of the total population comprises enfranchised citizens,
entitled to participate both as voters and as candidates in the election of
representatives, as well as to seek employment as civil servants.

Athens and Sparta came to be regarded as the leading exponents of
democracy and oligarchy respectively. When she had the opportunity to
interfere, Athens imposed democratic constitutions on member states of
the Delian League, while Sparta encouraged oligarchies in the Pelopon-
nesian League (see p. 74); this polarization was fostered by the clash
between Sparta and Athens in the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 111.82. 1).
How closely other Greek democracies imitated the Athenian model it is
hard to say. 106 Probably in most states which regarded themselves as

104 On the kind of sub-citizen status which included no political rights, see Mosse 1979 (a 92),
Lotze 1981 (l 96) 177—8. 105 On the government of Sparta see CAM iii 2 .i, 740-4.

106 For Cleisthenic tribes and Athenian-style preambles to decrees in fifth-century Miletus see
SGDI 5496 = Sokolowski LSAM 45, Herrmann 1970 (e 34) (publishing another inscription),
Gehrke i 98 o(e 31). Fora year divided into prytaniesand Athenian-style preambles in fifth-century
Lindos see SIC 1 10 n. 4 = DGE 78 = Blinkenberg 1941 (c 1 17) 212—14 (appendix to no. 16), SEG
iv. 171, Accame 1938 (c 1 12). See in general Lewis 1984 (a 77) 56-8. Ostracism, instituted in Athens
by Cleisthenes (CAM iv 2 334—8), is found also in Argos, Megara and Miletus (Arist. Pol. v,
1 302b 1 8— 19, Schol. Ar. Knights 85 5: no date), and in Syracuse (Diod. xi.86.5— 87: petalismosuscd fora
short time in the 450s, in imitation of Athens). Recently one ostracon which may have been used in an
ostracism has been found in Argos (BCM 1 10 (1986) 764—5 no. 3) and one in Megara (HOPOL 5
( 1 9 8 7) 59-73). That there was ostracism in Ephesus, alleged in many works of reference, depends on
an unwarranted inference from Heraclitus 22 b 121 D-K, by Guhl 1843 ( F *8) 71 with n. 2.

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4 . THE ATHENIAN REVOLUTION

democratic the Assembly was open to all citizens, without a property
qualification, and was the effective sovereign body. 107 How far these
constitutions were ‘administered in a democratic spirit’ is more doubt-
ful. Appointment by lot, and restrictions or a total ban on reappoint-
ment, were appropriate for maintaining equality not only within a citizen
body but also within a ruling class; but no doubt they were widely used
in democratic states. The claim has been made, and rebutted, that ‘Pay
for public office is not attested for any Greek (or Roman) city other than
Athens . . . Lacking imperial resources, no other city imitated the
Athenian pattern. ’ 108 Certainly pay for office was introduced in Athens in
the time of the Delian League, and the connexion between the League
and Athens’ ability to provide pay was seen by ancient writers (e.g. Ath.
Pol. 24); but Athens continued these payments in the fourth century,
though the League was no more and in the first half of the century she
was far from affluent; 109 Aristotle in Politics does not write as if pay was
peculiar to Athens, there is evidence for pay in the Boeotian federation
and Rhodes, and, given the concentration of our literary evidence on
Athens, the absence of specific evidence for pay in other democracies
may not be significant. Other cities were much smaller than Athens: they
will not have had the large number of potential office-holders which
Athens had (in fifth-century Erythrae men were allowed to serve in the
Council of a hundred and twenty one year in four: M— L 40 = IG i 3 14,
12), and could not have afforded the large number of stipends which
Athens paid; but no doubt they made do with fewer offices, and with
single officials or smaller boards where Athens used boards of ten, and it
is not incredible that some of the other democracies should have
provided appropriately modest schemes of pay for office and so should
have involved some of the less wealthy citizens in the running of the
state.

Even so, the provision of pay may well have been more of a strain for
some of the other states that attempted it than it was for Athens. In
Athens the rich were expected to make substantial contributions to the
expenses of the state, through the payment of taxes and the performance
of liturgies, and j urors were sometimes told that if their stipend was to be
paid they must condemn a rich man accused before them (see p. 84), but
after the sixth century we hear no more of demands for the cancellation
of debts and the redistribution of property. In many other places, life was

107 But if DGE 701 = Hill Sources 2 b r 16 = I EK i belongs to the democracy imposed on Erythrae
by Athens (cf. below), it is striking that a property qualification was fixed for jury service (see p. 5 7 n.
78).

108 Finley 1973 (l 39) 173, cf. Finley i960 (a 38) 48; contra de Stc Croix 1975 (a 108).

109 Assembly pay was added in or after 403 (Ath. Pol. 41.3). Hansen 1979 (d 32) argues that fewer
offices were salaried in the fourth century than in the fifth. The argument depends largely on silence,
and 1 am doubtful, but see Lewis 1982 (d 53).

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THE IMPACT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

less stable. All too often, the establishment of a democratic regime was
accompanied by the exile of the rich oligarchs and the confiscation of
their property, and from the middle of the fourth century demands for
social revolution became increasingly frequent. 110 Part of the reason for
Athens’ freedom from such troubles may be that, even in the fourth
century, she was able to make the payments which the demos wanted
without having to confiscate the property of the rich.

Constitutional government was an achievement of which the Greeks
were justly proud. Herodotus (vn. 104.4) represents the exiled king
Demaratus as saying to Xerxes that the Spartans ‘are free men, but not
utterly free: for they have the law as a master, and they fear that much
more than your subjects fear you’. If barbarians submitted to autocratic
monarchies which the Greeks would not have tolerated, that showed
that they were inferior creatures. 111 The Athenians, like other Greeks,
denied both personal and political freedom to slaves, and denied political
freedom to immigrants, as men who lived within their state but did not
belong to it, and to women; but subject to these limitations they did
come to see political freedom as the right of all, not only of the rich or
well born. The influence of that discovery has not been limited to
Classical Greece.

1.0 See Asheri 1966 (l 2) 60-119; F°ks 1966 (l 49); Harding 1974 (c 43) 285-6. Aristotle, Pol. v,
130533-7 mentions the imposition of burdensome liturgies as a practice which might provoke the
rich to combine against a democracy.

1.1 Cf. Hippoc. Air. 16, Arist. Pol. in, 1 285316-19, vn, 13 27b! 8-23.

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CHAPTER 5

MAINLAND GREECE, 479-451 b.c.

D. M. LEWIS

I. FROM 479 TO 461

There is no reason to doubt that the Hellenic alliance had taken some
form of oath to punish medizing states, though the versions least
affected by later propaganda contain an escape clause which would allow
interpretation (Hdt. vn.132 ‘those who had not been forced’, para-
phrased as ‘voluntarily’ by Diod. xi.3.3). But while Leotychidas and the
Peloponnesians on the other side of the Aegean were still contemplating
a wholesale expulsion of the medizers of northern Greece (Hdt.
ix. 106.3 1 ), Pausanias, in the aftermath of Plataea, was already faced with
interpreting the programme in the light of realism and military necessity.
A few miles from the battlefield, Thebes still held out. After ten days he
turned his force on the city, but its walls provided a substantial obstacle
and he may not have wished to proceed by a prolonged siege (it will have
been at least well into September). The medizing party is said to have lost
300 men of its ‘first and best’ in the battle, a substantial number for a
narrow oligarchy. A settlement was reached by which the city, no doubt
already throwing the blame on a small group (Thuc. 111.62.3—4; contrast
Hdt. ix. 87. 2), and with earlier services to the Greek cause to claim (Hdt.
vii. 202, 222; Plut. De mal. Hdt. 864—7), simply handed over the principal
medizers, who were later executed (Hdt. ix.86-8). It seems likely that it
was at this point that Thebes and other Boeotian cities became or
reverted to being the hoplite democracies which seem to have been the
norm later in the century. 2 Very little else can be asserted about Boeotia
in the next twenty years. The numismatic evidence may suggest that
Thebes lost her superiority and that Tanagra may from time to time have
tried to claim some form of ascendancy. 3 Of the two Boeotian states with
an unblemished record, Plataea, still an Athenian ally, acquired a
recognized position as a shrine of Greek freedom, but we hear little
about Thespiae, except that she seems to have tried to expand her

1 emporia is puzzling here; perhaps it was thought that the Ionians would be happier in coastal

cities. 2 See p. 133.

3 Kraay 1976 (c 190) no; Fowler 1957 (c 184).

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from 479 TO 46 1 97

population (Hdt. vm.75 .1); links with Athens are also possible here (cf.
p. 1 16 n. 74).

The advantages of a city wall will thus have been well in mind when, in
the autumn, friction first appeared among the victors. Athens had had
some kind of wall-circuit at least since the first half of the sixth century, 4
although it had played no visible part in strategic thinking up till now;
Mardonius had removed virtually all there was on his final withdrawal
(Hdt. ix. 1 3.2; Thuc. 1.89.3). Its rebuilding and improvement was thus an
urgent matter for a state which was henceforth likely to use much of its
military manpower by sea, and Themistocles’ view that it should be put
in hand immediately was supported even by Aristides, so far more
associated with hoplites than with the fleet. The operation, however,
prompted disquiet among those of Sparta’s allies who could already see
that the rise of the Athenian fleet had changed the balance of power in
Greece; only the Aeginetans are named as raising objections (Plut. Them.
19.2), but the Corinthians may have felt the same (cf. Thuc. 1.69.1).
Sparta was persuaded to press Athens to stop building her walls, on the
excuse that it might create a base for a future Persian invasion, but, by
means which rapidly passed into legend (Thuc. 1.89-93, with a host of
later variations), Athens carried her point and built the walls. On this, as
on so much about the rise of Athenian power in the fifth century,
opinions differed as to how hostile Sparta had been to Athenian moves.
We may suspect that there were differences of opinion in Sparta as well.

Spartans had commanded at the two great victories of 479, Plataea and
Mycale. These victories pointed forward to the two main directions in
which they could be followed up, the punishment of the medizers of
northern Greece and the liberation of the eastern Greeks. The com-
manders now changed roles. Pausanias, who had already discovered that
the punishment of medizers was not straightforward, was given the fleet
in 478, and his later actions prove that he himself saw his and Sparta’s
future field of action beyond the Aegean; his activities in 478 are
discussed elsewhere (p. 35). Leotychidas, whom we have already seen
associated with projects for northern Greece, moved to the mainland.

The logical date for his Thessalian expedition is 478, and this gets
some slight confirmation from a dubious story that Themistocles
proposed to burn the Greek fleet while it was wintering at Pagasae after
the retreat of Xerxes (Plut. Them. 20.1—2), but reasons have been found
to suspect that the sequence of events does not end until 476, and another
school of thought defers it to 469.5 Herodotus’ account (vi.72) is that
Leotychidas could have subdued the whole of Thessaly, but was bribed
to desist. After he was discovered in the act with a sleeve full of silver, he
was brought before a Spartan court, his house was demolished (cf. Thuc.

4 Vanderpool 1974 (1 172). 5 See Chronological Notes, p. 499.

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9 8

5 • MAINLAND GREECE, 479-451 B. C.

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FROM 479 TO 461

v. 63. 2-4), and he died in exile in Tegea. Pausanias (111.7.9), t ^ e second
century a.d., says he won several battles and that the bribery was by the
Aleuadae of Larissa, already known to us as the principal medizers;
Plutarch ( De mat. Hdt. 859c) names two tyrants actually deposed by
Leotychidas, Aristomedes and, probably, Agelaos. 6 Neither name is
known for this period; it has been guessed that Aristomedes is of Pherae
and, with greater plausibility, that Agelaos belonged to the principal
family of Pharsalus (Michel 1281, cf. Tod, GHI 147.34). The Aleuadae
certainly survived, though with diminished influence. Our evidence for
what happened next is almost entirely numismatic. 7 Before this time, the
dominant coinage had been that of Larissa, on the Persian standard. We
now have two quasi-federal groupings, both using the Aeginetan
standard, one claiming, for the first time, the name of Thessaly. There is
some movement of states between them, and Pharsalus stands alone.
That she, at any rate, started to look towards Athens is suggested, e.g. by
the activity of her citizen Menon in support of Cimon at E'ion in 476
(Dem. xxin. 1 99).

Obviously, we are not in a position to distinguish between what
Leotychidas found it difficult to do and what he was bribed not to do,
and we can hardly speculate about the nature of the opposition to him at
home. Since the uncontradicted story in Herodotus’ day was that he
owed the throne to a false oracle, his position can never have been
strong.

Even less can be said with certainty about relations with Delphi and its
Amphictyony. Of the process by which Delphi’s defeatist attitude and
dubious actual record 8 in the Persian invasion was pushed into the
background we hear nothing, and can only guess that some individuals
may have lost power there. Delphi remained a major Greek shrine and
received one of the three main Greek war-memorials (Hdt. ix.8 1 . 1 ; M— L
27), as well as dedications from individual states (Hdt. vm.122 9 ).
Another late story (Plut. Them. 20.3-4) describes an argument between
the Spartans, who wanted to expel medizing states from the Amphictyo-
nic Council, and Themistocles who argued that this would leave too few
states in control of it. Since we can, on the basis of later representation,
calculate that about two-thirds of the twenty-four Amphictyonic votes
were held by medizers, the question will certainly have been raised, but
presumably it was decided that it would be sufficient if the actual
representatives were more respectable. Fairly shortly after the war we

6 This is now seen to be hardly an emendation for the Agcllos of the better MS.

7 Herrmann 1922, 1924—} (c 186-187); Franke 1970 (f 26); Kraay 1976 (c 190) 115-16. Martin
1985 (c 194) 36-8 shows the dangers of drawing political conclusions. For a survey of the non-
numismatic evidence see Larsen i960 (f 43).

8 See CAH iv 2 540-2, 564-5. That Delphi’s ‘medism’ has been exaggerated is argued by Parker

1985 (K 73) 317-18. 9 Gauer 1968 (1 68) passim.

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IOO

5. MAINLAND GREECE, 479-45 I B. C.

find the Amphictyones honouring the glorious dead and taking action
against the wicked (Hdt. vn.213, 228—4; ?Paus. x.i9.i). !0

If we take the early date for Leotychidas’ Thessalian expedition, there
is no reason to place any Spartan activity north of the Isthmus after 476.
On the other front, similarly, Spartan official activity ceases after the
allies’ refusal to accept Dorcis in succession to Pausanias in late 478 or
early 477 (see p. 35). Here, however, there is evidence that opinions were
divided. Pausanias, in a private capacity, retained a strong interest in
overseas ventures. How widely in Sparta his opinion was shared is
uncertain. Thucydides’ account of his end shows some Spartans person-
ally sympathetic to him (1.134. 1), but the main evidence for Spartan
resentment at the loss of hegemony to Athens lies in a story dated by
Diodorus (xi.50) to 475/4, but probably attached by Ephorus to his
account of Aristides’ organization of the Delian League. According to
this, there was a serious possibility that Sparta would contest the naval
hegemony with Athens and the move to war was surprisingly averted by
the skill of one Hetoemaridas, a member of the gerousia. The consultative
procedure described has always interested constitutional historians
because of its similarity to a sequence of events in the third century, 11 but
it seems likely that the story was invented or expanded at a later date
when it became fashionable to project the theme of Spartan hostility to
Athens backwards. Thucydides seems to have no knowledge of it, and is
firm that the Spartans were happy to let the Athenians continue the naval
war (1.95.7)-

The operations of Pausanias raise further chronological problems. It
is clear that he stood his trial in Sparta for his conduct in 478 almost
immediately. He was acquitted on the major charge of medism (Thuc.
1.95.5, 128.3), though the story of his medism became more and more
elaborate (Thuc. 1.128.4—130; a variant in Hdt. v.32). However, Thucy-
dides does not date his later private venture, in which he held Byzantium
for some time, was expelled from there by the Athenians, and moved to
Colonae in the Troad, remaining there until he was recalled to Sparta by
the ephors (Thuc. 1.128.3, 131.1— 2). I hold that this sequence roughly
covers the rest of the decade, but certainty is impossible. 12

After his return from Colonae, the ephors, after delays and uncertain-
ties, felt that they had accumulated sufficient evidence to proceed to
extreme action against him. To the original charge of medism was now
added a charge of plotting with the helots. Thucydides was told enough
to enable him to endorse the charge and to accept that Pausanias’
activities had been revolutionary. If this is true and to be given a rational

10 It may be that it is in this period that the Spartans expelled the otherwise unknown tyrant Aulis
of Phocis (P!ut. De mal. Hdt. 8 5 9d), despite the loyalty of Phocis to the Greek cause, but the episode
may belong to the early 440s (Thuc. 1. r 1 2. j).

n Plut. Agis 8-9; Jones 1966 (f 37) 168—70; Forrest 1967 (f 2j) x i.

12 See Chronological Notes, p. 499.

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FROM 479 TO 461

IOI

basis, the only plausible line 13 is that Pausanias had come to see that
Sparta’s manpower did not offer a sufficient base for the concept which
he had of Sparta’s role, but, even in Thucydides, we are moving so close
to romance that it is not rational to distinguish between fact, accusation
and embroidered accusation. 14 Pausanias died, having taken refuge in
the sanctuary of Athena of the Brazen House and been starved out there
(c. 466). The Spartan authorities proceeded to use what they thought (or
said) that they had discovered to discredit the Athenian Themistocles,
now ostracized and living in Argos (see p. 65).

At what point Plistarchus, for whom Pausanias had been the regent,
attained his majority is uncertain, but it may not have been all that long
before his death in, apparently, 458. Whenever Leotychidas went into
exile, he was succeeded by a grandson, Archidamus, who will have taken
time to make his mark. It is possible that the importance of the previous
royal generation is exaggerated for us by the way Herodotus told his
story, but the doubts and troubles about Leotychidas and Pausanias,
together with the youth of their successors, will certainly have done
much to shift the power-balance at Sparta away from the kingship in the
direction of other centres of power in the state. 15

We must now retrace our steps to discover why Sparta should be
particularly sensitive at this time to possible plots with the helots and to
Themistocles’ presence in Argos. Specifically, we are attempting to find
out what lies behind Thucydides’ judgement (i.ii8.z) that one of the
factors which inhibited the Spartans from interfering with the growth of
Athenian power in the fifth century was that they were in part prevented
by wars of their own.

In 494 (or possibly a few years earlier 16 ), Cleomenes of Sparta at the
battle of Sepea had knocked out Argos as an effective opponent in a
hoplite war by a victory which is said to have cost the Argives six
thousand men. Thereafter, Argos was forced to reorganize her citizen
population by the absorption of persons described by Herodotus as
slaves (vi.83), more probably members of perioecic communities (Arist.
Pol. 130336; Plut. Mor. 24 5 F 17 ), ‘until the sons of the slain grew up’ and

13 Lotze 1970 (f 47) 270-5.

14 Rhodes 1970 (c 82); Westlake 1977 (c 108).

15 For the weakness of the fifth-century kingship, see, against de Ste Croix 1972 (c 36) 138-49,
Lewis 1977 (a 76) 43-8.

16 The double oracle of Hdt. vi.19 and 77 only fixes the year if it was made up after the event,
which there is no particular reason to assume. On the battle itself, see CAH tv 2 364.

17 As argued by Gschnitzer 1958 (a 53) 69-81; Forrest i960 (f 24) 222—5. Lotze 1971 (f 48),
followed by Adshead 1986 (f i) 37, argues that the new citizens did not come from outlying
communities, but had been inferior within Argos itself. As evidence accumulates for the classical
Argive constitution (see e.g. SEG xxix 36 1 , showing the Temenidai not in the tribe of their ancestor
Hyllus, but in the new tribe Hymathioi, for which see Nilsson 1951 (k 67) 73-5), I find it
increasingly hard to believe that such a drastic reorganization took place without the admission of
substantial new elements to the state. For this, the aftermath of Sepea still seems the most likely date.
A slightly different view in Andrewes 1990 (f 4).

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expelled the ‘slaves’ to Tiryns (Hdt. loc. cit.). For Herodotus, the sons of
the slain had still not grown up in 481 (vu.148). He can hardly be
thinking precisely, since Sepea will not have wiped out all male Argives
over the age of one, and it remains an open question whether the
expulsion of the slaves is earlier or later than 48 1 . That there is a king and
a boule at Argos then (Hdt. vii.149.2) hardly proves the matter either
way. If those expelled to Tiryns were perioikoi, no argument can be
drawn from the presence of Tirynthians at the battle of Plataea, brigaded
with Mycenaeans (Hdt. ix.28.4, 31.3), and consequently in the lists of
those who had fought the Persian War at Delphi (M— L 27) and Olympia
(Paus. v.23.2).

Despite Sepea, Sparta’s position had not remained unchallenged. That
there was a Messenian revolt in 490 which delayed the Spartan arrival at
Marathon was asserted by Plato (Laws 698c) and has been believed by
many scholars who have adduced flimsy supporting evidence. 18 Some
helot trouble in the early fifth century may be inferred from Thuc.
1.128.1, which has had less attention, but, if we believe that 3 5 ,000 helots
accompanied the Spartans to Plataea in 479 (Hdt. ix.28.2), the Spartans
had them well in hand at that time. More seriously, Cleomenes in 490,
after his withdrawal from Sparta (CAH iv 2 366), had caused alarm at
home by organizing the Arcadians and persuading them to convert their
traditional oath to follow the Spartans wherever they might lead 19 to one
to follow him personally. The centre of his activity was in the extreme
north of Arcadia at Nonacris, where they swore by the waters of the river
Styx, but it was surely more widely extended. The only manifestation of
it which we find is that Hegesistratus, an Elean seer escaping from Sparta
in the 480s, found Tegea on bad terms with Sparta at this time (Hdt.
ix. 37.4). 20

It is easier to use the names of Arcadian states as counters in a
historical game than to form any idea of the physical and social realities
which underlie the names. Tegea, the first substantial community to
come into contact with Sparta ( CAH hi 2 . 3, 355) will always have had a
focus in the cult of Athena Alea which goes back to Mycenaean times; 21
we have no means of telling when it coalesced, first politically and then
geographically, 22 into a single city from the nine demes of which, we are
told, it was originally composed (Str. vm.3.2, p. 337). Mantinea,
northwards in the same valley, is less visible in the sixth century, except
with Demonax the lawgiver, once described as basileus (P. Oxp.

18 Jeffery 1949 (c 1 j j) 26— 30 on M-L 22; Wallace 1954 (f 70); Huxley 1962 (f 35) 88; but see den
Boer 1956 (b 3); Pearson 1962 (c 77)421 n. 56.

19 de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 108-10; Peek 1974 (p 57 ) = SEG xxvi 461; Cartledge 1976 (f 13).

20 See Adshead 1986 (f i) 30-2. For the coins which have been associated with Cleomenes, see

below* p. 105. •“ 21 Callmer T943 (f 12) 24-5.

22 Information about synoccisms is collected by Moggi 1976 (f 5 3).

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FROM 479 TO 461 103

1367 = Hermippus fr. 8 2 11 Wehrli); its synoecism, from five demes (four
in Xen. Hell, v.2.8), is said to have been under Argive influence (Str. loc.
cit.), and an older site retained the name of Ptolis (the city) until a very
late period (Paus. vm.8.4). It is normal to attribute this Argive-
influenced synoecism to the 470s, but perhaps one should not rule out
earlier periods of Argive influence in Arcadia, even as early as 600 (Diod.
vn. 1 3.2). Some stimulus to political unity in both cases will have been
given by their appearance in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships (II. 11.607).
In any case, by 480, we find a force at Thermopylae consisting of 1,000
Tegeates and Mantineans (half each), 120 from Orchomenus, and 1,000
from the rest of Arcadia (Hdt. vn.202). At Plataea there were 1,500
Tegeates and 600 Orchomenians (Hdt. ix.28); the Mantineans arrived
late, as we shall see, and there is no mention of a general Arcadian force.
It seems fairly clear which Arcadian communities are approaching or
have reached a polis-organization. 23

A polis-organization is possible without synoecism (cf. Sparta, Thuc.
1. 10.2). The one fixed point in the development of synoecism is provided
by Elis, further west, where the synoecism is dated after the Persian Wars
by Strabo (vm.3.2, p. 336) and precisely to 471/0 by Diodorus’
chronological source (xi.54.1). Even here there were still no walls in 401
(Xen. Hell. 111.2.27), though the city spread into suburbs and fine
gymnasia. At both Tegea and Mantinea, the synoecized site was on fairly
open ground, with no acropolis or obvious natural defences; presumably
they both had a wall-circuit from a fairly early date, 24 though the first
Arcadian city wall attested in literature happens to be that of the much
stronger Orchomenus (Thuc. v. 6 1.4— 5). 25 It is fashionable to associate
synoecisms with democratic movements; 26 Elis at least has some very
democratic-sounding institutions in the early fifth century (DGE 410.8,
412.4 (Hill, Sources 2 B124) 27 ). But the reasoning for associating democ-
racy and synoecism is unclear, and it seems more likely that the initiative
towards settling in a city and building town houses will have come from
the owners of large estates who wished to keep up with the urbanizing
trend of greater cities. At Mantinea it appears to be the landowners who,
in 385, after the Spartans broke up the synoecism, at first resent the need
to tear down their houses in the city (Xen. Hell, v.z.j). Democracy, not
certainly visible at Mantinea before 421 (Thuc. v.29.1), and the ‘unplea-

23 For other aspects of the character of Arcadia see Adshead 1986 (f i) 21—2.

24 Mantinea had a wall in 385, and Scranton 1941 (1 149) 57-9 argues that some of the surviving

polygonal masonry is earlier than that, though it may have been preceded by a wall only of mud-
brick (cf. Paus. viu.8.7- 8 for mud-brick in thepre-385 wail). For Tegea see Berard 1892 (f 5 ) 547-8.
On the general probability of both walls being early, see Winter 1971 (1 179) 30 n. 60, 33 withn. 68,
58. 25 See Winter 1971 (1 179) 31 n. 64.

26 Most recently Adshead 1986 (f 1)95—8. For criticism of this prevalent view see O’Neil 1981 (f
56). 27 See Jeffery 1961 (c 137) 218-20 for dates and discussion.

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104 5 - MAINLAND G REECE, 479-45 I B. C.

sant demagogues’ of the early fourth century (Xen. loc. cit.) may be a later
development after the synoecism, and the Mantinean democracy was not
always of a radical type (Arist. Pol. i3i8bai).

These centralized Peloponnesian states are regularly found indulging
in minor imperialisms of their own, attempting to incorporate or
subjugate neighbouring rural communities. Elis had in effect reduced
Lepreum to tributary status well before 43 1 (Thuc. v.3 1 .2), and absorbed
other parts of Triphylia (Hdt. iv. 148.4; Str. vm.3.30, p. 355). It seems
unlikely that the engagement in western Arcadia between Mantinea and
Tegea in 423 (Thuc. iv. 1 34) was the first attempt either city had made to
extend her influence in that direction (both already have allies), though
this particular episode in which the Mantineans had established a
permanent fort (Thuc. v.3 3) does not antedate 43 1 (Thuc. v.29.1). There
is no particular reason to associate such expansionism with either
oligarchic or democratic governments, and Sparta, the hegemon of the
Peloponnesian League, may not have taken a continuous interest in it.

Despite the evidence for 490 and the 480s (above, p. 102), both
Tegeates and Mantineans joined Leonidas at Thermopylae in 480 (Hdt.
vii. 202), and ‘all the Arcadians’ and the Eleans were at least included in
the force which went to the Isthmus (Hdt. vm.72). In 479 the position
was slightly different. The Tegeates were well represented at Plataea
with 1,500 hoplites (ix.28) and fought well (ix.70— 1) in close alignment
with the Spartans. But, although Plataea, with its lengthy preliminaries
{CAH iv 2 5 99ff), was eminently a battle for which it was difficult to be
late by accident, both the Eleans and the Mantineans arrived after the
victory (ix.77). They blamed themselves vigorously, the Mantineans
made a gesture of pursuit of the departing Persians, and both states
exiled their generals when they got home. The delay even cost the
Mantineans their place on the lists of the victorious Greeks at Delphi
(M— L 27) and Olympia (Paus. v.23.2), though the Eleans were included,
doubtless because of their control of Olympia. Disloyalty to the
Peloponnesian League has been inferred by some scholars, but it is not
clear that anything more is involved than caution in the leaderships in the
cities about a distant and dangerous battle.

The main evidence about Spartan troubles in the Peloponnese after
479 lies in a list of five battles which they won under the auspices of the
seer Tisamenus (Hdt. ix.35; Paus. in. 11.7—8). The first is Plataea, the
second at Tegea against the Tegeates and the Argives, the third at Dipaea
against all the Arcadians except the Mantineans, the fourth against the
Messenians at Isthmus, 28 the fifth at Tanagra against the Athenians and
Argives. We shall see that Tanagra was in 45 8 and that Isthmus was after

28 This place is unknown, and the temptation to emend it to Ithome or to add Ithome was felt
very early, to judge from Pausanias’ text.

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FROM 479 TO 461 io 5

465. The date of Tegea is much less certain. As for Dipaea, the recent
consensus 29 has been to put it after 465 in the period of the Helot Revolt,
since the Spartans fought it with much reduced numbers (Isocr. vi.99).
This seems improbable. Dipaea is securely placed in the valley of the
Helisson (Paus. vm.30.1), far to the north of any likely movement
between Laconia and Messenia. An engagement there will only make
any sense if the Spartans are on the offensive, unlikely after the revolt,
and on a route to or back from Mantinea which will avoid Tegea. 30 If the
force is small, perhaps we should think in terms of something like a raid
to support pro-Spartans in Mantinea.

This does suggest that Mantinea’s loyalty was again in doubt after 479.
The only literary evidence which could support this is the undated
synoecism under Argive influence, since she was absent from the battles
of Tegea and Dipaea and there is positive evidence of her loyalty to
Sparta at the time of the Helot Revolt (Xen. Hell, v.2.3). 31 More positive
evidence for activity at Mantinea may come from the substantial series of
coins labelled Arkadikon which proclaim Arcadian unity (Fig. 2). Their
dating and interpretation has varied. 32 It used to be thought that they
were festival issues of no political significance, but this is hard to square
with the demonstration that three separate mints were at work, and we
can hardly overlook the fact that the predominant denomination is the
triobol on the Aeginetan standard, known from Thuc. v.47.6 as a
standard Peloponnesian soldier’s ration allowance. It now seems hard to
refer the beginnings of the issue to Cleomenes’ activities in 490, and the
start, at a single mint, 33 seems to fall after 480. At a later stage this mint is
joined by two others. Though the evidence for identifying these mints is
somewhat tenuous, there is a reasonable case for referring one of them to
Tegea, and it is not implausible to see Mantinea in the third, which long
survives the other two, perhaps until 418. If Mantinea returned to the
Peloponnesian League at the time of Dipaea, Sparta may have tolerated
the survival of a claim to an Arcadian entity there.

Tegea’s dissatisfaction seems to have been longer lasting, 34 though we

29 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 84 with n. 3; Andrcwcs 1952 (f 2) 3-4; Forrest i960 (f 24) 229.

30 Cf. Andrewes, HCT iv 32.

31 Synoecism in itself is not necessarily anti-Spartan. At Elis, after the punishment of the dilatory
generals of 479, there seems no reason to find hostility to Sparta. Elis falls into a period of political
obscurity (we do not even hear of any Elean force in action till 43 5, Thuc. 1.27.2) and cultural glory,
as she embarks on the rebuilding of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (see p. 189); if we could trust
Pausanias (v.10.2), this would be an assertion of supremacy in her own area.

32 See Wallace 1954 (f 70) 3 3-4; Williams 1965 (c 199); Caltabiano 1969/70(0 182); Kraay 1976 (c

190) 97-8. 33 Clitor for Williams, but perhaps Orchomenus should be considered.

34 Besides the battles of Tegea and Dipaea, we have to fit in Simonides fr. 122 (see Page 198 1 (j 82)
278-9 n. LUi) for men who saved Tegea from destruction (perhaps the battle of Tegea seen in a
different light) and what looks like the conclusion of the whole sequence, Polyaenus 11.ro. 3,
Cleandridas’ capture of Tegea with the aid of laconizing aristoi . Since Cleandridas was active well
after 445, the later this last is put the better, and it may well belong even to the 450s.

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5. MAINLAND G R E E C E, 479-4 5 I B. C.

Fig. 2. Silver coin of the Arcadian League,
about 465 B.c. (After British Museum Cata-
logue of Coins Peloponnese pi. 3 1 , 18; cf.
Kraay 1976 (c 190) no. 289.)

do not know its causes. She had indeed lost her argument at Plataea that
she was entitled to the left wing as the most honourable place after that of
the Spartans (Hdt. ix. 26-28.1), but the post she was given, next to the
Spartans, was nearly as honourable and one which we find her occupying
later (Xen. Hell, iv.2.20). Other motives are more likely, perhaps a
conflict of interests in western Arcadia; for later Spartan sensitivity here,
compare Thuc. v.33.1. In any case, the presence of Argives at the battle
of Tegea warns us that wider issues were involved.

Argos had been neutral in 480 and 479; Herodotus’ account assumes
that this neutrality might amount, if occasion served, to actual medism
( vii. 148— 52, ix. 12). The limits of her influence at this point may be
defined by those of her neighbours, some of them at times her subjects,
who appear on the Greek side: Mycenae by itself (vn.202, with 80 men)
and grouped together with Tiryns (ix.28, 400 men), Epidaurus (eight
rising to ten triremes, viii.i, 43; 800 men, ix.28), Troezen (five triremes,
VIII. 1, 43; 1,000 men, ix.28, and providing a naval base, vm.42.1),
Hermione (three triremes, vni.43; 300 men, ix.28); all these duly appear
on the Greek victory lists. It looks as if Argos has lost all influence east of
the river Inachus. We learn without surprise that one of the Argive
grievances against Mycenae was its claim to the cult of Hera (Diod.
ix. 65 .2), and there is slight, but positive, epigraphic evidence ( SEG xm
246) that Argos had lost control of the Argive Heraeum in this period.
The uncertainty in this direction, as we have seen (above p. 102), is the
nature of Tiryns in 480-79. It is assumed here that the ‘slaves’ had
already been expelled to Tiryns and that the Argive government was
already one of ‘the sons of the slain’, naturally hostile to Sparta. 35 The
main remaining uncertainty about what Argos controlled is in the north,
where the small town of Cleonae had importance for her as the means of
controlling a panhellenic festival, the Nemean Games. 36 Mycenae is

35 For an alternative view, in which the aristocratic leanings of ‘the sons of the slain* incline them
to Sparta and which defers their counter-revolution until about 468, see Forrest i960 (f 24) 225—7.

36 Lewis 1981 (E41) 74; Adshead 1986 (f 1)35, 59-61. See also her study (4— 7) of the geographical
position of Cleonae and Nemea.

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FROM 479 TO 4^! 10 7

found asserting a claim to Nemea as well (Diod. loc. cit.), and the position
of Cleonae was certainly at issue in this period (see p. 109). But Cleonae
does not seem to have taken part in the Persian War and, alone of the
panhellenic sanctuaries, Nemea received no Greek victory dedication.
Cleonae was certainly in Argive control in 465 (Str. vni.6. 19, p. 377), and
it looks as if Argos held on to it practically without a break. Of Orneae,
in the same general area, we hear nothing in this period.

The long-term aim of any Argive regime will have been to rebuild the
city’s manpower and territorial control, although short-term political
considerations may have modified this, as when the ‘slaves’ were ejected.
The process which followed is summarized by Pausanias (vm.27. 1): the
Argives were in continual risk of subjection by Sparta until they
strengthened Argos’ population by destroying (or incorporating?)
Tiryns, Hysiae, Orneae, Mycenae and other unimportant towns of the
Argolid; this gave them greater security from the Spartans and greater
power with their neighbours. 37 The process envisaged here was a long
one; Orneae was still independent in 418 (Thuc. v.67.2) and not
demolished until 416 (Thuc. vi.7.1— 2).

According to Herodotus (vi. 8 3), it was the slaves at Tiryns who, some
time after their expulsion from Argos, took the initiative in attacking
their masters, urged on by a seer from Arcadian Phigalea; a long war
followed, finally won by the Argives. This certainly ended the indepen-
dence of Tiryns. Some of the inhabitants may have been incorporated
into the Argive population (Paus. 11.25.8, vm.27. 1); some certainly
moved on to the coastal town of Halieis (Hdt. vn. 137.2; Str. vin.6.1 1, p.
3 73 38 )- We can hardly fix the dates, and it is perfectly possible that the
final capture of Tiryns is to be put relatively late, after the other events in
this period in which Argos is involved. 39

Argos’ efforts at recovery and Tegea’s independent line are both in a
sense anti-Spartan. Cooperation between Argos and Tegea is twice
attested: Argos helped Tegea at the battle of Tegea (Hdt. ix.35); Tegea
helped Argos in the capture of Mycenae (Str. vn.6.19, p. 377). We shall
see reason to date the latter after 465. But the visible contacts between
Argos and Sparta are more contradictory. The battle of Tegea was a
battle against Sparta, but when, after Pausanias’ death, the Spartans and
Athenians sent missions to arrest Themistocles, living in ostracism at
Argos (see p. 65), Themistocles did not think he could rely on Argive
resistance to the demand and fled from the Peloponnese (Thuc. 1. 1 3 5 . 2—
1 36.1). The views so far adopted in this volume (pp. 45, 66) put this event
around 466.

37 Tr€pioUovs can hardly be technical here; what perioikoi would be left? See Andrewes 1 990 (f 4).

38 On the text see Aly and Sbordone 1950 (c i) 245-6, and Baladie 1978 (c 8) ad loc.

39 Sec Chronological Notes, p. 500.

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108 5 - MAINLAND GREECE, 479-45 I B.C.

According to Thucydides, Themistocles, though living at Argos, had
been making visits to the rest of the Peloponnese. It has been assumed 40
that there is a hint to be taken here, that these visits are to be associated
with anti-Spartan, democratic, synoecisms in the Peloponnese and, in
particular, with trouble for Sparta in Arcadia, and that it was these local
activities which prompted Spartan action against him. It is a shade
disquieting that the copious ancient tradition about Themistocles shows
no signs of having taken the hint and gives him no specific anti-Spartan
activity at this time, despite the various scraps suggesting earlier hostility
to Sparta. 41 But, even if we discount the anti-Spartan nature of the Elean
synoecism and are agnostic about the date of that at Mantinea, there does
seem to be enough trouble in Arcadia, at any rate, for the Spartans to
hold against Themistocles and for them to be in a generally sensitive
mood. Whether their suspicions of Themistocles in Argos were firmly
grounded or general, they could support them with evidence (true or
false) about his correspondence with Pausanias and felt that they could
ask for Athenian support in removing him; they had, after all, acquiesced
in the Athenian expulsion of Pausanias from Byzantium (p. too).

If the Spartan-Athenian move against Themistocles is to be dated
around 466, it would seem unlikely that any further major events in the
Peloponnese intruded before the Helot Revolt, generally and rightly
dated in 46 5, 42 at least on the assumption that the battle of Dipaea and
therefore that of Tegea antedated that revolt. Argos may have been
sufficiently daunted by the battle of Tegea to be unwilling to resist
Spartan demands, at least with pressure from Athens added.

The earthquake at Sparta which sparked off the revolt was certainly
substantial; late sources speak of 20,000 dead (Diod. xi.63.1), all but five
houses destroyed and ‘all the ephebes’ killed (Plut. Cim. 16.4-5).
Opinions differ about the long-term effect on Spartan manpower and the
contribution of the earthquake to the situation of 425 when the capture
of 120 Spartiates was a major disaster (see p. 41 5); it must surely be true
that a loss of citizen women will have had serious demographic effects. 43
The young king Archidamus, grandson of Leotychidas, was said to have
behaved well in the emergency and to have seen the importance of
military readiness (Diod. xi.63.5— 7; Plut. Cim. 16.6). For Thucydides,

40 Gomme, HCT i 408-9, 437; Andrewes 1952 (f 2); Forrest 1960^ 24); Adshead 1986 (f i) 86-
103. But see O’Neil 1981 (f 56).

41 The episodes of Athens’ walls, the projected burning of the Greek fleet, the expulsion of
medizers from the Amphictyony. 42 See Chronological Notes, p. 500.

43 The fullest recent argument is that of Toynbee 1969 (a 1 1 5) 346-52, criticized by Cartledge
1979 ( F M) 2.21—1. That the Spartiate population fell steadily is not in dispute, and I am not out of
sympathy with Cartledge’s discussion of other factors (see particularly 307-17, and compare
Hodkinson 1986 (f 3 1)); the question is how great a push the earthquake gave the decline. See also
Cawkwell 1983 (f 16) 385-90.

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109

the revolt which followed was predominantly Messenian, though joined
by two perioecic communities, Thouria in the lower Pamisus valley of
Messenia and Aethaea, which we cannot place; the rebels immediately
established a base on Mount Ithome, the last stronghold of independent
Messenia (see CAH hi 2 . 3, 328). Herodotus gives us a Spartan disaster at
Messenian Stenyclarus in which 300 Spartans were wiped out (ix.64.2)
and a victory at Isthmus (ix.35.2 44 ). Diodorus and Plutarch seem to
presuppose more activity by the Laconian helots and even a projected
attack on Sparta itself. That there was a serious threat to Sparta would
follow from the Athenian claim that Cimon had saved Sparta when it was
under heavy Messenian pressure (Ar. Lys. 1137-44 with scholia 45 ).
Plutarch ( Cim . 16.8—17.3) accepted this and the consequences that
Cimon led two Athenian expeditions to Sparta during the war, but
Thucydides only describes one expedition by Cimon (see below), and it
seems slightly more likely that Aristophanes is exaggerating the services
which it performed. It is clear, at any rate, that the war was largely fought
in Messenia, that it had its elements of open warfare, and that the
Spartans only slowly drove the Messenians back to their base on Ithome.

Sparta was not without support. We hear of help from Aegina (Thuc.
11.27. 2, iv.56.2) and Mantinea (Xen. Hell, v.2.3); the Plataeans (Thuc.
hi. 5 4. 5) presumably came with the Athenians. Neither Elis nor Corinth
is attested, and the situation could have been worse. Despite their
hostility to Sparta in the previous decade, Argos and Tegea made no
attempt to intervene. It was more important to Argos to use Spartan
preoccupation as an occasion for a final settlement with Mycenae, which
was destroyed after a siege (Diod. xi.65; Str. vm.6.10, p. 372) with
Tegeate help (Str. vm.6.19, p. 377). We have suggested (above, p. 107)
that the Argive capture of Tiryns also belongs to this period. 46

Corinthian neutrality has been inferred from Plut. Cim. 17. 1-2, a
passage which certainly attests aggressive Corinthian behaviour both to
the north against Megara and to the south against Cleonae (see above,
p. 107). The first evidence for Corinthian activity after the Persian Wars
suggests an attempt to strengthen her grip over her colonial dependen-
cies in north-western Greece. 47 Thucydides (1. 103.4) goes further than
Plutarch and attests an actual war in the 460s between Corinth and

44 See Cartledge 1979 (p 14) 219 for a suggestion about the location.

45 The version is adopted by Spartans in 369, Xen. Hell, vi.j.33.

46 Strong arguments have been produced (Amandry 1980 (k i) 233-40) for supposing that the
Argive decision to reshape the Heraeum site had already been taken around 460 in the euphoria at
regaining control of the Argolid. The archaeological evidence shows that work there long
antedated the burning of the temple in 423 (Thuc. iv. 133.2), and there is unpublished epigraphic
evidence pointing to a similar conclusion.

47 Graham 1964 (a 52) 128-30; for Leucas see Plut. Them. 24.1.

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J. MAINLAND G R EE C E, 479-45 I B. C.

Megara, perhaps made possible by Spartan preoccupation. It has been
argued 48 that Plutarch’s story about Cleonae and events at the beginning
of major hostilities in 459 suggest that Corinth had for some time been
building influence at the expense of Argos, that she had been backing
Mycenae and showing considerable interest in the area to the east of the
Argolid; in these activities she had the support of Sicyon and Epidaurus.
For her, then, as for Argos, there were interests to be pursued close to
home, but it would be surprising if she had not made even a token
gesture to help Sparta.

By 462, the main problem remaining for the Spartans was the
Messenian position on Ithome, defended, apparently, by stockades
which they found it hard to deal with. Athenian skill in dealing with such
defences had been demonstrated at Plataea and Mycale (Hdt. ix.70.1— 2,
102.2—4), and Thucydides (1. 102.2) gives this as the principal reason for
asking Athenian help. Whether the Athenians had any obligation to
come is unclear. 49 The debate at Athens and the relationship of Cimon’s
expedition to Athenian internal politics are discussed elsewhere
(pp. 68—9). The expedition was authorized, and Cimon came to Sparta
with a large force (4,000 hoplites in Ar. Lys. 1 1 43, if that passage refers to
this occasion; see above). However, before any substantial success was
achieved, the Spartans, ‘suspecting Athenian daring and neoteropoiia\
dismissed them, alone of all the allies, saying that they had no further use
for them. In chapter 4, the reference to neoteropoiia is taken to be the
revolutionary spirit manifested in the reforms of Ephialtes; it has also
been held 50 that the Athenian troops were visibly coming to doubt
whether the Messenians were really the revolted slaves they had been
sent to subdue. The rebuff was a turning-point in Greek history,
precipitating a major change in Athenian policy which we discuss in the
next section.

Some emend Thuc. 1. 103. 1 and place the end of the Messenian War in
461 and 460. 51 We are here accepting the text and ending the war in 456/
5, but, like Thucydides, we record it here. The terms agreed were
notably favourable, testimony to Spartan desperation as well as to their
obedience to a Delphic oracle ‘to release the suppliant of Zeus of
Ithome’. The occupants of Ithome and their families could leave the
Peloponnese freely; they could only be seized if they returned to it; they
would then become the personal property of their captor. The Athenians
could find a use for them (see p. 117), and they will return to the
narrative, formally known as Messenians.

48 Lewis 1981 (e 41), and, quite independently, but with a greater stress on the Nemean Games,
Adshead 1986 (f i), 67—85.

49 The alliance against the Mede was still in force (Thuc. 1. 102.4); nothing follows from the
epexegetic ^ufifiaxovs at 102.1.

50 de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 179-80. 51 See Chronological Notes, p. 500.

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THE £ FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR’

I 1 1

II. THE'fIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR 1

‘As soon as the Athenians returned home, they renounced the alliance
they had made with the Spartans against the Mede and became allies of
the Argives their enemies, and both of them made the same oaths and
alliances with the Thessalians’ (Thuc. 1. 102.4). Thucydides did not need
to stress that in the Persian Wars Argos had pursued an ambiguous
neutrality and Thessaly had medized. After his ‘footnote’ about the end
of the Messenian War, he continued:

The Megarians too joined the Athenians in alliance, leaving the Spartans,
because of their border war with Corinth. The Athenians acquired Megara and
Pegae and built for the Megarians the long walls from the city to Nisaea and
garrisoned them themselves. And it was not least on account of this that the
Corinthians first conceived their violent hatred for the Athenians.

It has been suggested 52 that this new grouping was defensive, that
Athens now realized that Sparta was basically hostile to her, now learnt
that the Spartans had considered helping Thasos in 465 (p. 44; Thuc.
1.101.1-2), 53 and looked for the kind of help which would be useful;
Argos would provide hoplites, Thessaly cavalry, Megara a position on
the Isthmus to impede Spartan action. This view seems hardly likely.
Sparta was still, on our view, involved with the Messenians, and the
Athenians would hardly have embarked on the Cyprus campaign which
developed into the Egyptian expedition (p. 50) if substantial trouble
were expected on the mainland.

It seems more reasonable to suppose that Athenian policy was
expansionist, and that the Spartan alliance and memories of 480—479
would no longer be allowed to stand in the way of implementing policies
which had been in many minds for many years. Athens’ initial wish will
have been to have a final, long-delayed, settlement with Aegina (see
CAH iv 2 365—7). Aegina was on good terms with Sparta (see p. 109) and
probably a member of the Peloponnesian League; we shall see that her
independence was a prime concern for Corinth. Megara wanted security
from Corinth. Argos wanted self-respect and at least the re-establish-
ment of her position in her own area; we have argued that Corinth had
been meddling in it. Corinth seems to be the main target of the new
alliance. This will not hold for Thessaly, but there are indications that
some Thessalians, perhaps the Aleuadae, had been angling for Athenian
support for some time. 54 The attraction for Athens may have been
cavalry, but there may also have been ideas in Athens about exercising
pressure in Boeotia.

52 Jeffery 1965 (1 81) 52; de Ste Croix 1972 (g j6) 182-5.

53 This rumour, apparently unknown in 462, cannot have gained currency at Athens before this
point. 54 Jeffery 1965 (1 81) 52 n. 49.

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5. MAINLAND G R EEC E, 479— 45 I B. C.

The timing of what follows presents problems which we discuss
elsewhere. 55 Spectacular diplomatic action was not, at Athens, always
followed up militarily, and, on our view, there is nothing to fill 460
except the take-over and securing of Megara. The Long Walls to Nisaea
were only a fifth of the length of the Athenian Long Walls to the Piraeus
(Thuc. iv. 66. 3 against n.13.7), but will have taken time to complete.
Corinth was being warned off, and a positive threat to her was created by
the occupation of Pegae on the Corinthian Gulf. There may still have
been some uncertainty at Athens as to how far and how fast the new
policy should go, and its claims were matched against those of older
commitments.

It is after all noteworthy that the change in internal politics at Athens
led only to the abandonment of Cimon’s Spartan policy, and not also to
slackening of the Persian War, with which he was equally identified. The
Eurymedon campaign (p. 43) had not liberated the Greeks of Cyprus,
and the Thasian revolt (p. 44) had inhibited a further move in this
direction. In 459 an Athenian and allied fleet of 200 ships lay in Cypriot
waters. It did not stay there long; its further moves, successes and
ultimate defeat are described in chapter 3.

However, the new alliance got to work on the mainland as well in 45 9.
The first move may have been on a small scale, and was in the interests of
Argos. An Athenian force landed at Halieis, now occupied by the exiled
Tirynthians, and was caught and defeated by a combined force of
Corinthians, Epidaurians and Sicyonians, 56 demonstrating their interest
in the Argolid. The Athenian navy did better, winning a naval battle
over ‘Peloponnesians’ (presumably the same combination) at Cecrypha-
lea, between Epidaurus and Aegina. A much greater battle followed, off
Aegina itself, in which both Athens and Aegina were supported by allies.
The Athenians captured seventy ships and, under Leocrates, laid siege to
Aegina. They had established naval superiority in the Saronic Gulf, but
the Corinthians and their allies were determined to save Aegina, the
capture of which would seal that superiority. They slipped a small force
across to Aegina, but placed their main hopes on an invasion of the
Megarid. They seized the heights of Geranea to the north of Megara,
and invaded the plain. They could not believe that the Athenians had the
strength to help the Megarians, with so much effort already committed
against Aegina and in Egypt; if they did try, that would relieve the siege
of Aegina. Thucydides’ brief narrative takes on a warmer glow. ‘But the
Athenians did not move the force at Aegina, but the oldest and the
youngest of those left in the city arrived at Megara, under the command
ofMyronides.’ These reserve forces (probably those from 18 to 20 and 50

55 See Chronological Notes, pp. 500-1.

56 The Sicyonians, not in Thucydides, are attested by SEC xxxi 369.

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THE ‘ FI RST PELOPONNESIAN WA R* I I 3

to 59), presumably with the Megarians, fought a drawn battle. The
Corinthians withdrew, which was in the circumstances tantamount to a
defeat, and the Athenians set up a trophy. The Corinthians, heavily
criticized by their elders at home, returned twelve days later and started
to set up their own trophy. They were beaten off. A largish group, losing
their way on the march home, found themselves trapped in a quarry and
were wiped out by a combination of hoplites and light-armed troops.
Corinth had had a bad year, and we hear little more of her for some
time. 57

It is likely that the Megarian Long Walls had shown their value in this
campaign, and the Athenians now embarked on long walls of their own,
a project, nearly five times as large, which shaped the strategy of the rest
of the century. Themistocles had said (Thuc. 1.93.7) that, if Athens were
hard pressed by land, it would be more important to hold on to Piraeus
than to Athens itself. The Long Walls, a shorter one covering Phalerum,
a longer Piraeus, eliminated the need for such a choice. The Athens—
Piraeus— Phalerum complex would henceforth be as near to an island
(Thuc. 1.143.5, [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.14-16) as anything on the mainland
could be. We can say little about the details of this great enterprise,
destroyed in 404. Leake in 1841 58 saw well-built foundations, over 3^
metres thick (see p. 208, Fig. 25).

The walls would hardly have been started now, had it not been
thought possible that the conflict would widen and that Sparta would
come in, even though she was still involved at Ithome. 59 Sparta did come
into the war in 458, but curiously sideways. 60 For Thucydides (1.107),
there was no original Spartan intention of attacking Athens at all. Sparta
was provoked by a Phocian attack on her supposed mother-city Doris
into an expedition into central Greece. The expedition was large,
involving 1,500 Spartans (presumably including perioeci) and 10,000
allies, and some scholars 61 have been unwilling to believe that it can have
had the limited objective of protecting Doris. They have appealed to
Plutarch (Cim. 17.4), in whose manuscripts Delphi rather than Doris is
the object of aggression, or to Diodorus (xi.8 1.2—3), where, in a later
stage of the account, a desire to promote Theban interests is relevant.
This is not Thucydides’ story, and it is unwise to underestimate what

57 Athenian casualties in 459 will also have been very heavy. Now that a parallel text to M— L 33
has appeared ( SEG xxxiv 45), it is no longer safe to regard that text, with its 170-odd dead, as an
exceptional monument for the tribe Erechtheis alone. Simple multiplication by ten would be
dangerous, but the total surely ran well into four figures. 58 Leake 1841 (d 46) 1 4 17.

59 The continuation of the Messenian War is presumed, not only from the text of Thuc. 1.103.1,
but from the absence of Archidamus in 458. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.11 will hardly bear the weight some
have put on it.

60 For recent argument that Sparta did not play an aggressive role in the war, see Holladay 1 977 (f
32), Lewis 1981 (e 41); and, against Salmon 1984 (f 61) 420-1, Holladay 1985 (f 33).

61 E.g. Walker, CAH v* 79-80.

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5. MAINLAND GREECE, 479— 45 1 B. C.

Sparta might do from motives of religion and sentiment. 62 We follow
Thucydides, assuming only that he has antedated the period at which the
Spartan allies reached 10,000. 63

Having settled with Phocis, the Spartan commander, Nicomedes,
regent for Plistoanax son of Pausanias, found himself in a difficulty. The
expedition had presumably come by sea across the Corinthian Gulf, but
that way of return was thought likely to be blocked by an Athenian naval
squadron. The alternative route, through the Megarid, was also blocked
by the Athenians, not only in Megara, but watching the difficult roads
across Geranea. 64 He decided to wait in Boeotia and see what might turn
up; no eagerness for a clash with Athens is visible. Thucydides does not
say, but one of the sources of Diodorus (xi.8. 1 .1— 3) did, that at this point
the Thebans prevailed upon the Spartan force to enlarge their wall-
circuit and give them control of the Boeotian League. In Boeotia,
Nicomedes was approached secretly by Athenians, hoping to abolish
Ephialtic democracy and stop the building of the Long Walls; the two
are obviously thought to be interconnected. Aeschylus’ Eumenides,
produced that spring, had spoken with foreboding about the possibility
of civil war at Athens (861— 6). 65 Thucydides does not say that Nico-
medes was impressed, but the fact that he moved as far east as Tanagra
perhaps suggests that he was. 66

At Athens the Ephialtic strand of policy which in 462 had advocated
the trampling of the Spartans now gained full control. The Spartans
were fostering plotters against democracy and they were cut off from
home; such an opportunity might never recur. The Athenians them-
selves crossed the border to Tanagra in full force; a thousand Argives
and some Thessalian cavalry came to help, as well as other allies,
described by the Spartans in their victory dedication (M-L 36) as
Ionians; not only naval forces, as at Aegina, but land allies from the
Delian League were now being employed against Greeks. The force,
14,000 in all, outnumbered the Spartans and their allies, only now
perhaps rising to 11,5 00. The battle seems to have lasted two days (Diod.
xi. 80, with some confusing details 67 ). The facts most remembered were
that the Thessalians changed sides, no doubt for reasons of internal
politics, 68 and that losses on both sides were heavy. 69 The Spartans

62 Doris could have been important as the basis for Spartan representation on the Amphictyonic
Council; see Zeilhofer 1959 (f 73) 36-8, 43-4; Daux 1957 (a 22) 104—5; Roux 1979 (f 60) 4-9.

63 See Reece 1950 (e 67). 64 See Hammond 1973 (a 54) 435.

65 But Macleod 1983 (a 82) 25-7 shows that this is not necessarily a reference to contemporary
events. 66 For Tanagra, seep. 96, but we can hardly be sure what is going on there.

67 The confusion of Diodorus’ narrative of Tanagra and Oenophyta is sorted out by Andrewes
1985 (c 7).

68 Jeffery 1961 (c 137) 375, with text of a Thessalian victory dedication, on which see also Larsen
i960 (f 43) 241-2. A new gravestone of a man from Atrax who died in the battle ( SEC xxxiv 560;
Hansen, CEC 2.637) is notably ambiguous.

69 The Argives may have lost as many as four hundred of their thousand (M-L 35; Clairmont
1983 (k 17) 136-8).

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THE ‘FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR’ I I 5

certainly in a sense won (cf. Hdt. ix.3 5 .2), but Diodorus (xi.80.6) makes
the battle a draw and followed by a four-month truce. Such a truce makes
slightly better sense of Thucydides’ account, by which the Spartans went
home through Geranea and the Isthmus, pausing only to chop down
trees in the Megarid. They had certainly not conducted themselves as if
they had instructions to make war on Athens.

Diodorus’ truce has been connected with an unsolved problem about
Cimon. Plutarch ( Cim . 17.4—9) has an elaborate story of how he, though
in ostracism, had wished to fight on the Athenian side at Tanagra. The
boule had decided to reject the offer, but he encouraged his friends to fight
gallantly and remove the suspicion that they were pro-Spartan. This
influenced the Athenians to recall him and he immediately made peace
between Athens and Sparta. This is very close to, though not the same as,
a fragment of Theopompus ( FGrH 1 1 5 f 88), by which the Athenians
recalled Cimon to make peace, when he had not yet completed five years
of ostracism. I am more inclined than the author of chapter 4 (p. 75) to
accept the recall, but, since, in Plutarch, it appears to belong to the winter
after the battle and Plutarch, at any rate, seems to be thinking of the
armistice of 451 (below, p. 120), Diodorus’ armistice after Tanagra
appears to be something different.

If the Spartans had had enough for 458, the Athenians had not.

On the sixty-second day after the battle, they made an expedition against the
Boeotians under the command of Myronides, and, beating the Boeotians in
battle at Oenophyta, they gained control of Boeotia and Phocis, took down the
walls of Tanagra, took the hundred richest of the Opuntian Locrians as captive,
and finished their own long walls. And after this the Aeginetans too came to
terms with the Athenians, taking down their walls, surrendering their ships, and
agreeing a tribute for the future. (Thuc. 1. 108.2-4)

We have no idea where Oenophyta was, and Thucydides’ order may be
more logical than chronological. 70 To these gains of 45 8 we can perhaps
add the port of Naupactus on the north coast of the Corinthian Gulf,
taken from the Ozolian Locrians (Thuc. 1. 103. 4). 71

Athenian control now extended far beyond the original naval alliance,
but we can hardly assess either the amount of strength it brought Athens

70 Diodorus’ order (xi. 8 2. 5-83) is: siege of Tanagra and destruction of its wails, general ravaging
of Boeotia provoking the Boeotians to battle, capture of all Boeotian cities except Thebes, gaining
control of the Opuntian Locrians and taking of hostages, a further move resulting in control of the
Phocians and taking hostages from them. To this campaign he adds what appears to be the same
campaign against Pharsalus which appears in Thuc. i.iii.i; no commander is named there, but
Myronides is not impossible for it.

71 For those who maintain the manuscript text of Thuc. 1. 103. 1 (see Chronological Notes, p. 500),
the only limiting factor for this acquisition is the end of the Messenian War, 458 then becomes the
most likely date, and the connexion will be with the Athenian fleet, estimated by Diodorus (xi.8o. 1)
at fifty ships, which Nicomedes had been expecting in the Corinthian Gulf. Those who maintain
Thucydides’ strict order and emend 1.103.1 have to assume an Athenian periplous to the Corinthian
Gulf in 461 or so (even before the accession of Megara had given Athens Pegae), which has left no
trace except this capture of Naupactus.

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Il6 5. MAINLAND G R EEC E, 479-45 I B. C.

or how the control actually worked. The new territories entered into
some form of alliance with Athens (they provide troops at Thuc.
1. 1 1 1. 1 ); it has generally been assumed that they were differentiated from
the members of the Delian League. 72 Theban speakers in Thucydides
twice (111.62. 5 , iv. 92. 6) attribute Athenian success in Boeotia to Boeotian
stasis, and Pericles said (Arist. Rhet. 140732) that the Boeotians were like
holm-oaks; as they knocked each other down as they fell, so did the
Boeotians by fighting each other. That suggests that the stasis is between
cities. We have seen slight numismatic evidence for Tanagra’s claims to
hegemony after 479 (p. 96) and an assertion by Diodorus that Sparta
backed renewed Theban pretensions in 458 (p. 114). But, if this is the
stasis in question, it is not obvious that Athens took sides in it. It was
Tanagra’s walls which Athens demolished after Oenophyta, and Dio-
dorus (xi.83.1), generally disbelieved, asserts that Thebes remained
independent. The problems are, if anything, worse at the level of party or
constitutional stasis. There are two main pieces of evidence. Aristotle
{Pol. i302b25) speaks of a time after Oenophyta when democracy at
Thebes was destroyed by its disorder and anarchy which won the
contempt of the wealthy, and a fifth-century Athenian speaks of a time
when Athens unsuccessfully backed ‘the best men’ in Boeotia ([Xen.]
Ath. Pol. 3 . 1 1 ). There is little point in trying speculative combinations; 73
Athens will have backed whatever groups seemed likely to support
her, 74 perhaps without regard to their ostensible political colour, and
may have changed policy from time to time. She could, for example,
have started by allowing a Theban democracy to retain its walls. By 447
Athenian control was weak in north-western Boeotia, and exiles had
seized at least Orchomenus and Chaeronea (Thuc. 1.113.1).

The fall of Aegina, the last event to be attributed to 45 8, perhaps gave
most pleasure in Athens. The ‘eyesore of the Piraeus’ was now under
control, her fleet, a threat to Athens for fifty years, had gone for good,
she was indistinguishable from any other member of the Delian League.
This had been achieved in the teeth of a now quiescent Corinth, and
Athens was now supreme in the Saronic Gulf, a supremacy to be
confirmed, at dates which we cannot fix, by the acquisition of Troezen
(Thuc. 1.115.1) and, for a time at any rate, Hermione ( IG i 3 31).

Thucydides’ main narrative gives us no events for the campaigning
season of 45 7. 75 We need not regard it as a totally blank year. The

72 The view that IG i 3 9 records a treaty with the members of the Delphic Amphictyony and
belongs to this year is rejected by Roux 1979 (f 60) 45 — 6, 239-40. It has been suggested that at least
Orchomenus may have paid tribute in the strict sense in 452 (Lewis 1981 (e 41) 77 n. 43), and it
would also be possible to restore Acraephnia in IG i 3 259.1 1 1 20 of 45 3.

73 See Larsen i960 (f 42A) 9-10 with 17 n. 2; Buck 1979 (f n) 148—50; Demand 1982 (f 20) 34—5.

74 Cf. the Thespian proxenoi of 7 Gi 3 23, one of whom is called Athenaios; his family’s connexions
with Athens will have been of long standing.

75 For this unorthodox view, see Chronological Notes, p. 501.

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THE ‘FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR’ II7

tightening of Athens’ grip on Boeotia and Phocis will not have been a
small matter, and there is also Troezen to be considered. There will also
have been uncertainty about Spartan intentions. The story in Plutarch
about Cimon’s recall (see above, p. 1 1 5) could imply the expectation of a
Spartan invasion of Attica in spring 457, and it may not be coincidence
that this also seems to be the most likely year for a Persian mission to
Sparta (Thuc. 1.109.3). Thucydides’ story is that the King sent one
Megabazos to Sparta with money to persuade the Peloponnesians to
invade Egypt; he did not succeed and some of the money was wasted. 76
Either Sparta did not fancy facing the Megarid again or she remained
unwilling to fight Athens in any whole-hearted manner. 77

Thucydides’ next item, to be dated to the summer of 45 6, is Tolmides’
circumnavigation of the Peloponnese. His account is brief. He only
mentions three stopping places; the burning of the Spartan dockyard,
the capture of Chalcis, a Corinthian settlement west of Naupactus, a
landing at Sicyon and a victory here. Since he uses the word periplous
(circumnavigation) and two of the three stops are in the Gulf of Corinth,
we can believe that, whatever damage was intended to Sparta on the way,
one of the main objects of the expedition was to carry the war there.
Diodorus (xi.84) provides more detail. Tolmides, wishing to compete
with Myronides’ glory, advocated the ravaging of Laconia. He was
given fifty ships and a thousand hoplites, which he succeeded in
increasing unofficially to four thousand. 78 He took Methone in Laco-
nia, 79 but withdrew at the Spartans’ approach. He captured Gytheum,
burnt the Spartan dockyards there, and ravaged Laconian territory. He
then moved to the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, won over Zacynthos
and Cephallenia, and then moved to Naupactus. He captured this too
and settled in it Messenian notables, just released by the Spartans at the
end of the siege of Ithome, which happened at the same time. 80

Since the Spartans had a fleet of at least sixteen ships in 480 (Hdt.
viii. 43), they are likely to have had a formal fleet-base, presumably
already at Gytheum (cf. Cic. de Off. m. 1 1 .49), at least as early as this. 81 We

76 Diodorus (xi.74.6) expresses a Spartan refusal in even firmer terms. For Arthmius of Zelea
who ‘brought the Median gold to the Peloponnese’, see p. 51 n. 55.

77 If the Spartans did anything this year, besides sitting it out at Ithome, it will have been a raid

against Argos, repelled at Oenoe with Athenian assistance. So Jeffery 1965 (1 81) 56-7, antedating
Tolmides* expedition. But the battle of Oenoe is not easy to believe in; see Andrewes 1 97 5 (e \ ) 9- 1 6
(the topography revised by Pritchett 1965-85 (aioo)iu 2-1 2, 46-50); Francis and Vickers 1985 (E27
and 1 64). 78 This is an unparalleled and implausible proportion of hoplites to ships.

79 Presumably Messenian Methone, as in Thuc. 11.25.1. Methana in the Argolid cannot be totally
excluded and would give better geographical order, but there is more geographical confusion later.

80 Most of Diodorus’ account is not paralleled elsewhere. Schol. Aeschin. 11.75 and Paus. 1.27.5
add Boeae and Cythera to Tolmides’ achievements. No other source has Thucydides’ Chalcis, and
only Pausanias picks up the battle at Sicyon. Only the burning of the Spartan dockyard is common
to virtually all accounts.

81 For Gytheum, see Str. vui.5.2, p. 365, Edgerton and Scoufopoulos 1972 (f 21).

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I I 8 5. MAINLAND GREECE, 479-45 I B.C.

have seen no particular reason to assume any Spartan naval activity in
this war (the crossing of the Corinthian Gulf in 458 is unlikely to have
involved naval vessels), but evidently Gytheum was thought a worth-
while objective. It may have been thought, rightly or wrongly, that some
Persian gold was going into an effort to repair the losses of Sparta’s allies
in the Saronic Gulf. Any circumnavigation of the Peloponnese would
involve landing somewhere in Laconia, and few Athenians are likely to
have felt inhibitions about doing damage while they were there.

Given that Tolmides’ fleet will have had to land from time to time,
there is nothing implausible about the stops at Zacynthos and Cephalle-
nia which Diodorus gives him. We may be more doubtful that they were
actually won over in any permanent sense; we know next to nothing
about either in this period. The remaining two stops in Thucydides are
definitely hostile, the capture from Corinth of Chalcis in a useful position
covering the approaches to the narrows of the Corinthian Gulf, 82 and the
attack on Sicyon, which we now know to have been in the war from the
first (above, p. 1 1 2). Simply because of Thucydides’ silence, there has
been reluctance to believe Diodorus’ account that it was Tolmides who
settled the Messenians in Naupactus; his view that he now captured it as
well certainly runs against Thucydides. But one should not multiply
Athenian incursions into the Gulf unnecessarily, and provisionally we
should accept this occasion for the settlement. 83

‘Provisionally’ in this case has more than its usual force. An inscrip-
tion connected with the settlement has remained unpublished for more
than twenty years. All we know of it 84 is that it lays down the
arrangements under which the Messenians and the native Naupactians
should live together under the protection of Athena Polias, no doubt
representing her city; the continued existence of a Naupactian commun-
ity, invisible in Thucydides, had already been deduced from M-L 74 (cf.
SEG xix. 392). The Messenians of course also honoured Zeus of Ithome,
whose suppliants they had been (Paus. iv.53.2). The wall-circuit was
large, but even so the suburbs spread outside it (Thuc. m.102.2-4); at
least once (ibid.) it was too large for the inhabitants to guard themselves.
Before the capture of Pylos (p. 414) brought reinforcements, the largest
Messenian hoplite force we hear of is 500 (Thuc. hi. 75.1); we can
envisage a population of four or five thousand, dedicated to maintaining
the Messenian name and available for a range of Athenian projects. They
may not have been all that ready to settle down on the useful plain of

82 Cf. Thuc. 11.82.3. At some time Athens captured another Corinthian foundation, Molycreum,
closer still (Thuc. m.102.1).

83 There is even reason to wonder whether Tolmides did something to secure the adhesion of
Achaea, mentioned by no one; see below, p. 119.

84 Mastrokostas 1964 (f 50) 295.

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THE ‘FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR’ I I 9

their new home. At least once we hear of them on a piratical expedition
(Thuc. iv. 9.1). 85

Athens now had a potentially firm grip on Corinth’s western gateway.
We do not know whether she attempted to exercise it by putting a
blockade squadron into Naupactus, as she did in the Archidamian War
(P- 399 )-

The next group of actions in mainland Greece which Thucydides
describes (i.iii) all seem to belong to one campaigning season; it is
uncertain whether it is 45 5 or 45 4. 86 First comes a Thessalian expedition,
led, according to Diodorus (xi.83.3— 4), by Myronides. Diodorus says,
plausibly enough, that the Athenians wished to punish the Thessalian
behaviour at Tanagra (p. 114), but also alludes to the main motive in
Thucydides. Here it is a Thessalian exile, Orestes, son of Echecratides,
basileus of the Thessalians, whose request for reinstatement initiated the
expedition. With Boeotian and Phocian troops the expedition moved
against Pharsalus, but achieved nothing against the Thessalian cavalry.
Orestes presumably came from Pharsalus and his exile is likely to be
connected with the Thessalian change of sides at Tanagra; we can say
little more. 87

Not long after, Pericles took a thousand Athenian hoplites on a naval
expedition in the Corinthian Gulf. This was not a circumnavigation of
the Peloponnese, but started from Pegae in the Megarid. 88 The first
target was again Sicyon; again there was a successful battle with no long-
term results. 89 Pericles moved on to the west. The first stop was in
Achaea. Thucydides’ language does not suggest that these were Athens’
first dealings with Achaea, certainly in her control in 446 (Thuc. 1. 1 1 5 . 1 ,
iv. 2 1. 3). Plutarch did not read him thus and no one gives Pericles credit
for the acquisition; it should perhaps be added to Tolmides’ achieve-
ments (see above, p. 1 1 8, n. 83). With Achaean help Pericles crossed the
Gulf to Acarnania and unsuccessfully besieged Oeniadae, at the mouth

85 Pausanias (iv.zj) has a long and involved story of how they almost at once captured the
Acarnanian town of Oeniadae and held out there for more than a year. There are too many
implausibilities in it to make it profitable to try to isolate a kernel of truth. Basically, it belongs to the
patriotic literature of revived Messenia; cf. CAH iu 2 .$, 352 n. 44.

86 See Chronological Notes, p. 501.

87 The view of Morrison 1942 (f 34) 60-3, that Orestes and Echecratides were Aleuadae of
Larissa and that Pharsalus was attacked not for itself, but because it was the key to Thessaly, depends
on an interpretation of Theocr. xvi.34 which I do not find compelling.

88 The ships had perhaps been left by Tolmides (Anderson 1954 (f i a) 81). Thucydides gives no
number. There are a hundred in Plut. Per. 19.2-3, fifty in Diod. xi.85 (Diodorus describes the
expedition twice; xi.88.1— 2 is a better version).

89 In Diod. xi. 88. 2 the Spartans send help to Sicyon. Plutarch makes much more of the Sicyon
episode, and says that Pericles penetrated far inland and that the battle was at Nemea. He or his
source has probably confused the sanctuary of Nemea with the river of that name, but see Lewis
1981 (e 41) 78.

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I 20

5. MAINLAND GREECE, 479— 45 I B.C.

of the Achelous; 90 we may guess that it had some affinities with
Corinth. 91 Further operations in mainland Greece were curtailed by bad
news from Egypt (p. 5 2). A pause in Thucydides’ account is marked by a
brief sentence (1. 1 1 2. 1): ‘later, after a gap of three years, a five-year truce
was made with the Peloponnesians’, perhaps in winter 45 i/o. 92

The preoccupations of Athens during these three years have been
discussed in chapter 3 (pp. 54—60). Here it is only relevant to remark that,
if the Peloponnesians made any serious attempt to profit by Athenian
weakness or reverse any of Athens’ gains, it has left no mark on the
record, and that there is no reason to assume that Athens made any
territorial concessions in the Five Years’ Truce. The picture seems to be
one of Corinthian exhaustion and Spartan quietism. Those who hold
Sparta to be fully committed to the war can explain her inaction by the
impossibility of passing the Megarid. 93 Those who hold that she had
never been enthusiastic 94 can more easily contemplate the possibility that
Sparta was unwilling to profit by Athenian lack of success against Persia;
the spirit of 480-479 could still be invoked. 95 If it were argued at the time
of the making of the truce that Athens must have her hands free for the
Persian War, the argument would sit well in the mouth of Sparta’s old
friend Cimon, surely back from ostracism by 4 5 1 , if not earlier (above, p.
75). That Cimon made the truce is stated by Diodorus (xi.86. 1) and could
be read into a confused passage of Andocides (111.3); as we have seen (p.

1 1 5), it is hard to disentangle this truce from one made after Tanagra.

A more permanent arrangement was a Thirty Years’ Truce between
Sparta and Argos (Thuc. v.14.4, 22.2, 28.2), probably made in 45 1. 96 We
have heard nothing of Argos or indeed anything beyond the coast of the
Peloponnese since the battle of Tanagra, 97 and have little evidence to
elucidate Argive preoccupations. What we do have is remarkable, a text
from the middle of the century (M— L 42; see also SEG xxx.3 54) in which
a federal structure appears to link Argos with at least two states in Crete
and in which physical intervention by Argos in Crete is thought possible.
It is not inappropriate to end this chapter with such a reminder of the
extent of our ignorance, once we leave the main line of Thucydides’
narrative.

90 Diodorus’ inferior version makes him win over all the Acatnanians except Oeniadae; that is in
direct conflict with Thuc. 11.68.8. The attitude of Oeniadae to Athens is distinguished from that of
the rest of Acarnaniaat Thuc. 11. 102.2, but its hostility may only start now. For Paus. iv.25 seen. 85.

91 Grundy 191 1 (c 39) 347-54; Lewis 198 1 (e 41) 77.

92 Argument about the date turns on whether the Spartans broke the Truce in 446, and certainty
is impossible; see e.g. Gomme, HCT 1413. Good judges have thought it possible that there was a
dislocation in Thucydides’ text and that the T ruce came before the three blank years (Gomme, HCT
1 325, Bengtson 1977 (a 4) 212), but such procedure is very dangerous.

93 de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 187-95. 94 See note 60. 95 Lewis 1977 (a 76) 62—3.

96 It has not quite run out in summer 421 (Thuc. v.28.2). No other states are mentioned, and it is
hardly clear whether any of Sparta’s allies were involved. 97 But see p. 1190. 89.

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CHAPTER 6

THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

D. M. LEWIS

I. THE PEACE OF CALLIAS

Thucydides’ account of the Fifty Years contains no statement of any
kind about a cessation of hostilities between Athens and Persia. That is,
by any standards, a serious omission of a matter directly relevant to the
development of the empire (cf. Thuc. m.10.4): it is the nature and
completeness of his excursus which should be questioned rather than the
fact that the Persian War came to an end. It is clear that Athens abstained
from further offensive action against Persia after Cimon’s last expedi-
tion. Nothing in Book 1 of Thucydides suggests that Athens was known
to be in a state of war with Persia in the 430s, and in the early years of the
Peloponnesian War Athens appears to be feeling for Persian help
without any suggestion that peace itself was an issue. 1

The only sources which fill the gap with any clarity are derived from
Ephorus. Of these, Aristodemus 1; may be safely neglected. In Diodo-
rus (xn.4) the King is moved by the defeats in Cyprus to desire peace. A
mission to Athens from the Persian commanders is followed by an
Athenian embassy headed by Callias son of Hipponicus and by a
settlement. The terms reported are that all the Greek cities of Asia should
be autonomous, that the Persian satraps should not come within three
days’ journey of the sea, that no long ships should come beyond Phaselis
and the Blue Rocks, 2 and that the Athenians should not attack the King’s
territory ( chora ). 3

It is not clear in Diodorus where Callias went: he could certainly be
read as if the mission went no further than Cyprus. But Herodotus
(vii.i 5 1) speaks of an Argive embassy to Artaxerxes in Susa as coincid-
ing with the Athenian embassy under Callias which was there on other
business ( erepov nprjypiaTOS eiveKa); his language suggests that Callias’

1 Thuc. 11. 7. 1, Ar. Ach. 61-125; Meyer 1899 (a 87) 71-2, 77.

2 These are just inside the Black Sea. See, against Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 213—14, Oliver 1957 (e

, 8 ).

3 The attempt of Meister 1982 (e 54) 29-31 to show that Ephorus, working from a tradition
which had these events in the 460s, had wrongly transposed them, is unconvincing.

I 21

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

mission would be well known to his readers. 4 We should therefore
accept that the negotiations took place in Susa.

Herodotus expresses himself indirectly. Thucydides has failed to
recount the negotiations in their place; he is similarly silent about the
renewal of the Peace with Darius 11 , now virtually certain (see p. 422),
and viii. 5 6.4, a passage which strongly implies a previous limitation on
the King’s movements by sea, 5 is the nearest he gets to referring to a
definite arrangement. We are therefore faced with an absence of direct
contemporary evidence, and the silence is not fully broken until 380. In
that year, Isocrates (iv. 1 20) makes an unfavourable comparison between
the King’s Peace negotiated by Sparta in 387/6 and the Peace which the
Athenians had made:

One may see the greatness of the change most clearly, if one were to read out and
compare [one word, napavayvoiT)] the treaty of our time and those now
inscribed. It will appear that then it was we who were defining the border of the
King’s empire, assessing some of his tributes and preventing him from using the
sea. But now it is he who governs Greek affairs and gives orders as to what each
shall do, and is practically establishing billeting officers in the cities.

Thereafter, there is a flood of similar passages 6 in which the comparison
with the King’s Peace is stated or implied, which vary in the terms which
they report. These all come from Athenian orators; we have already seen
what the Athenocentric Ephorus said.

By the third quarter of the fourth century this Athenian propaganda
was provoking a reaction. Some unknown muddler may have said (Plut.
Cim. 13.4) that it was the battle of Eurymedon which had forced the
King to make peace; Callisthenes {ibid.) said that the King’s acceptance
of territorial limits was purely de facto, through fear. As we have seen,
Isocrates implies the existence of a written text in 380. Theopompus
{FGrH 1 1 5 f 1 54) knew such a stela, but said it was a forgery, since it was
in the Ionic letters introduced officially in 403/2; it is unfortunately
unclear whether he was denouncing a treaty with Artaxerxes or that with
Darius II. 7

These remained minority views, and Plutarch {Cim. 14.5) treats the
fact that Craterus, at the end of the fourth century, included a text of the
Peace in his collection of decrees as conclusive. But no topic in fifth-

4 It has been argued again recently (Walsh 1981 (e 88); Meister 1982 (e 54) 22—4; even more
vigorously Badian 1987 (e 3) 2) that these missions should be dated shortly after Artaxerxes’
accession in 465/4; it is not explained why the Argi ves should then be worried that Artaxerxes might
think them enemies, which makes good sense in 450/49 after they had been allied to Athens for a
decade (Meyer 1899 (a 87) 75). 5 Andrewes, HCT v 134-5.

6 Bengtson 1 962 (a 3) 64—9 is the most convenient collection; add Theopompus FGrH 1 i 5 F 1 5 3
{ibid. pp. 29-30).

7 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 205—7; Connor 1968 (c 21) 77-87; as it happens, M— L 6i~IG i 3 402
provides an Athenian official text of imperial interest in Ionic letters as early as 432.

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THE PEACE OF CALLIAS 123

century history has provoked more continuous debate. The silence of
Herodotus and Thucydides, the variety of the reported terms, 8 the
alleged belief of the unknown source of Plut. Per. 12.3 that war was
continuing at the time of the debate on the Acropolis buildings have all
been pressed into repeated attempts to demonstrate that the Peace was
not authentic. Most recently, the wrong dating of Hdt. vn.i 5 1 and the
implications of Plut. Cim. 1 3.4 have been used to shift the argument to
the 460s, either along the lines that the Peace genuinely belonged after
Eurymedon but was short-lived 9 or that the tradition put it after
Eurymedon but was false. 10 Even these views are not totally new, and on
all the topics so far discussed I find myself in total agreement with
Eduard Meyer’s defence of the Peace in 1 899. 11 To fuss about the details
involves the dangers of losing sight of the main fact. The war did come
to an end.

But there is now much factual detail not available to Meyer which
needs to be explored. First, there is the evidence of the quota-lists
(Fig. 3). 12 The fifth list (its number is preserved: A TL 1 and 11 List 5 = IG
i 3 263), the first of a new assessment period, reflects the collection of
spring 449. The maximum number of entries is 188 names in 199 lines,
but there are some double entries and more two-line names than usual;
the true figure will be approximately 163. 13 This represents a rise of
about 14 names over the average for the first assessment period, and it is
likely that most of the 21 to 23 names attested in it for the first time are in
fact appearing for the first time: the most important are Acanthus,
Erythrae, Hestiaea, Iasus, Cythnus, Paros, Siphnos, Tenos, possibly
Naxos, Eretria, and Chalcis; by contrast, 28 states disappear for a time
after the first assessment period, though some of them will still be
paying, through larger units. Whatever the explanation for the earlier
absences (see pp. 5 6-9), the problem has now been settled. After this list,
it is more difficult to see clearly. If we make the universal assumption that
the list at the top of the reverse of the first stela was labelled the ninth
list 14 and reflects the collection of spring 445, we only have two lists
(ATL 1 and n Lists 7—8 =IG i 3 264-5, henceforth A and B) to cover the
collections of 448, 447 and 446. 15 There can be no doubt that A and B
belong to consecutive years; they are linked by close similarities of order
and by payments in B complementary to shortfalls in A. The difficulty is

8 On these see Thompson 1981 (e 85). 9 Walsh 1981 (e 88).

10 Meister 1982 (e 54). 11 Meyer 1899 (a 87) 71-82.

12 For fuller discussion, see M-L 50, Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 153-4, 599.

13 ATL hi 30-1.

14 IG i 3 266; it is not certain whether ‘ninth’ should actually be read (Lewis 1954 (c 138) 25-9;
McGregor 1962 (c 140) 267-75).

,s The attempt of Pritchett 1964, 1966, 1967 (c 158-160) to find space for the eighth list on the
back of a lost block attached to the top of the stela has been disproved by a new fragment of the top,
Meritt 1972 (c 150) 403-5.

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124

6. THE THIRTY YEARS* PEACE

Obv«rs« Right lateral

List 1

3 line heading . six columns of names,
each of 25 lines

List /
Postscript

list 2

1 line heading ; seven columns of nones,
each of 18 lines

List 2

three columns
of names

List 3

1 line heading ; five columns of names ,
each of 30 lines

List B

3 tine heading;
two columns
of names; each
of no lines

List 4

1 line heading ; five columns of names,
each of 32 lines

List 5

1 line heading ; five colunvs of names,
each of 40 lines

List A

) line headiry ; five columns of names,
each approximately 38 lines

vacant

Fig. 3. Layout of Athenian tribute-list stela I.

to know whether they are the lists of 448 and 447 or of 447 and 446. If
they are the lists of 447 and 446, there is no possibility that the stela
explained the gap for 448. 16 If the missing year was 448, there is a strong
temptation to relate this to the Peace of Callias; it has for example been
held that there is no list because tribute was in theory only payable while
war with the barbarian was in progress. 17 If, on the other hand, A and B
belong to 448 and 447, the range of possibilities is slightly increased,
because there is space unaccounted for above the ninth list. There could
have been an explanation of the absent list of 446; there might have been
a very short quota-list, reflecting widespread withholding of tribute after

16 Though uncertainty may have been shown by the omission of the numeral in the heading of A.

17 Support for this has been sought in Thuc. 1.96.1; see Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 227; Wade-Gery
1945 (e 87); ATL hi 230-1, 277-9, but see de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 3 i x — 1 2; the view that there was
no record of quotas in 448 because the whole tribute was allocated, e.g. for a temple to Athena Nike
(M— L p. 135, Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3), 154), seems less probable.

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THE PEACE OF CALLIAS

I2 5

the battle of Coronea (p. 1 3 3); it has even been held that Athens, in that
crisis, gave up her claim for the year. 18

Interpretation about what is going on inside Lists A and B themselves
can be deferred (p. 129). At a minimum there seems to be some
considerable dislocation of the system of receiving and recording tribute
in these years, which are likely to be years of crisis. I prefer the solution
by which no tribute was paid or payable in 448 and in which attempts to
restart collection in 447 were not well received, but clearer evidence
would be welcome.

Certain aspects of the start of the Periclean building programme are
clearer and relevant. 19 It is quite certain that the first year of the published
accounts of the building of the Parthenon was 447/6 ( IG i 3 436; the date
deduced from IG i 3 449); some preliminary discussion will have taken
place. The building programme can be seen in various aspects (see p.
139). One aspect was certainly that of a group of dedications ( avaOr ) -
Tiara) to the gods for the achievements which were past (Dem.
xxii. 76 = xxiv. 184; Plut. Per. 12.1); it will not be irrelevant that part of
the decoration of the Parthenon involved contests of Lapiths and
Centaurs, Greeks and Ama2ons, Gods and Giants, all symbols of a
triumph of civilization over barbarism. 20 It seems hard to believe that the
Parthenon did not have something of the nature of a victory dedication
from the first. 21

Thought will have been given to the cost of such a programme. The
hardest figure we possess for the ultimate cost is that for the gold and
ivory cult statue designed by Phidias, between 700 and 1,000 talents (M—
L 5 4B = IG i 3 460). Some very high figures used to be believed, resting on
a reference to ‘thousand-talent temples’ in Plut. Per. 12.2, and a figure of
2,000 talents for the Propylaea (Harp. s.v. nponvXaia raura 22 ); compara-
tive study of better documented building operations 23 seems to show
that these figures are much too high. The most likely interpretation of a
text of 433 (M— L 5 8 A. 3— 4 = IG i 3 52) seems to be that at some earlier
stage a decision had been taken to fund expenditure of 3,000 talents and
then think again. 24

18 Accame 1938 (c 1 1 3) 41 3.

19 No attempt is made here to use the evidence of Plut. Per. 1 7 on the summoning of a panhellenic

congress to discuss the rebuilding of temples destroyed by the Persians; see Seager 1969 (e 81);
Bosworth 1971 (e 11); Walsh 1981 (e 88). 20 See pp. 177, 215-17.

21 The point is made even more clearly for those who believe that a temple to Athena Nike
(Victory) was planned in the early 440s (M-L 44 = /G 1* 35), but the dating of the text rests on
epigraphical considerations which not all accept (see Mattingly 1982 (1 108) 381-5, but scepticism is
made more difficult by Tracy 1984 (c 169) 281-2).

22 For the text, see Keaney 1968 (1 87). *3 Stanier 1953 (1 157).

24 The view of ATL in 326-8 (cf. Wade-Gery and Meritt 1957 (d 103) 182-8) by which fifteen
annual payments of precisely 200 talents were planned is over-elaborate (see M-L p. 159); it seems
simpler to suppose that the hellenotamiai were to turn over their annual surpluses until the target
figure was reached.

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126 6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

There is a further point of interest in the building accounts. Earlier
accounts, certainly for the bronze statue of Athena Promachus ( IG i 3
435), show the source of the funds as the kolakretai, Athens’ civic
treasurers. By contrast, the main source of the funds for the Parthenon,
the chryselephantine statue and the Propylaea, is always the Treasurers
of Athena: the kolakretai do not appear; the hellenotamiai only seem to
contribute that which is properly Athena’s, the quota of one-sixtieth of
the tribute. In 440 (M— L 56 = IG r 3 363) we find the Treasurers of Athena
paying the costs of suppressing the Samian revolt. It appears to follow
that the hellenotamiai now have no reserve, that the League reserves
transferred from Delos were given to the Treasurers of Athena, and that
the basic contention of Pericles’ critics in Plut. Per. 1 2, that the building
programme was financed by the money contributed by the allies, was
correct. 25 The merging must have taken place before 447/6. 26

It may now be clearer why this chapter has shown so little patience
with the conventional criticisms of the Peace of Callias. The League
treasury has been appropriated; a building programme, showing strong
signs of being a victory dedication and perhaps expected to cost 3,000
talents, has been started. The only conclusion which can be drawn is that
the Athenians were confident before starting work on the Parthenon that
the Persian War was over, by mutual consent. Beside this conclusion, the
details are relatively unimportant. We can have no sure view as to
whether the King was forced to the indignity of oath-taking; we cannot
be sure how authentic was the text which Isocrates could read and which
Theopompus disbelieved. 27 It may be the case that no great parade was
made of the details; Demosthenes even asserted in 343 (xix.273) that
Callias had been fined 50 talents for taking bribes in his embassy, and the
abandonment of Cyprus at least will have been a bitter pill to swallow.
Only after the King’s Peace would the achievement really be proclaimed,
at a time when Athens had little else to be proud of.

Some terms of the agreement can perhaps be deduced from the history
of the following years. The King does not seem to have renounced his
claim to the tribute of Ionia. 28 There is some reason to believe that the

25 Despite the scepticism of Gomme 1953/4 (g 15) 16—17 and HCT 11 31-2, this contention
(Stevenson 1924 (d 91); ATL in 337) appears to be sound.

26 A papyrus scholiast on Demosthenes appears to date the decision, on Pericles’ motion, to 450/
49, and is the basis of the financial scheme worked out by ATLand Meritt and Wade-Gery 195 7 (see
n. 24). Accepting it produces grave chronological problems: see below.

27 In Thuc. vni. 5 8. 1 an agreement is made for the King, and he does not swear it himself. That it
could be asserted that Artaxerxes II had sworn the King’s Peace (Tod, CHJ 1 18. 10-1 1) perhaps does
not make it true; see Badian 1987 (e 3) 27. The second part of that article and Holladay 1986 (e 36)
represent a welcome willingness to accept informality, though I have reservations about both.

25 See Thuc. vni. 5.5,6.! and Murray 1 966 (a 93). For Isocrates’ claim that the Athenians were to
assess someofhis tributes, see Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 21 1— 1 3; ATL m 275;Cook 1961 (f 18) 16-
17; Murray, op. cit. 1 5 5—6.

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THE EMPIRE ESTABLISHED I 27

cities of Ionia were to be deprived of fortifications, 29 perhaps some that
Athens gave up her right to establish settlements or colonies there. 30
That the restrictions on naval movements existed in some form seems to
follow- from Thuc. vm.56.6; the restrictions on military movement by
land are more mysterious. 31 It is not to be expected that the arrangements
would be honoured at all levels; we shall find at least one satrap engaged
in subversion from time to time (pp. 143, 398).

There can be no certainty about the chronology. It is hard to believe
that the Peace was known when tribute was paid in spring 449 (p. 123). If
we omit Plutarch’s Panhellenic Congress, 32 it might just be possible for
Callias to return and for the decision to be taken about the financing of
the building programme before the end of the archon-year 4 5 0/49, as the
papyrus commentary on Demosthenes 33 requires, but not all will think
this source worthy of such respect. 34

II. THE EMPIRE ESTABLISHED

In the years immediately following the Cyprus expedition, Thucydides
reports only one pair of events, a Spartan expedition to Delphi, which
entrusted the shrine to the Delphians, followed by an Athenian counter-
expedition handing it over to the Phocians. 35 This would be in line with
the Athenian alliance with Phocis (p. 115), and Sparta, which had an
Amphictyonic vote, seems to be making an anti-Athenian move while
debarred from direct action against Athens by the Five Years’ Truce. 36

It seems that much else was going on to occupy Athens. If the events
of the late 450s had created an empire, techniques of control had to be
created. We have tentatively argued that 449 saw the conclusion of an
arrangement with Persia and the merging of the League treasury with
that of Athena. Plutarch (Per. 1 1.5), in the general context of Pericles’
provision for the demos, speaks of his cleruchies, 1 ,000 settlers to the
Chersonese, 500 to Naxos, 1 50 to Andros, 1,000 to Thrace ‘to live with
the Bisaltae’, others to the foundation of Thurii. Later ( 1 9. 1 ) he gives
more detail about the Chersonese, Pericles’ most admired expedition.

29 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 219—20; Lewis 1977 (a 76) 153; contra Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 149-51,
Brunt 1966 (e 13) 92 n. 54, Cawkwell 1973 (e 14) 54 n. 3.

30 It has, however, been argued that there is evidence for colonies at both Erythraeand Colophon

after the Peace; see ATL hi 282-4; Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3) 162—3; Bradeen and McGregor 1973 (c 121)
98-9. 31 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 215-19; Andrewes 1961 (g 5) 16-18.

32 See p. 125 n. 19. 33 See p. 126 n. 26. 34 See Chronological Notes, pp. 501—2.

35 Thuc. 1. 1 12.5; more details in Plut. Per. 21.2—3, where the Phocians have Delphi in the first
place, Schoi. Ar. Birds. 5 56, where Philochorus ( FGrH 328 f 34) is said to have dated the Athenian
expedition in the third year after the Spartan one; in view of Thucydides’ language, ‘year’ has often
been emended to ‘month’; Hdt. 1. j 1.3-4 and Plut. De mal. Hdf. 8 5 9d may be relevant (see p. 100).

36 For the Spartan vote, see Roux 1979 (f 60) 4-9, who also (44-6, 239-40) discusses the
relationship of IG i 3 9 to these events; see also Sordi 1958 (p 66); Zeilhofer 1959 (f 73) 45-50.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

The Chersonese had been subject to a prolonged period of Thracian
raids, and Pericles not only strengthened the cities’ population with his
thousand Athenian settlers, but fortified the isthmus from sea to sea. For
these events, the quota-lists provide some clarification and dating, since,
as shown above (p. 60), reductions in tribute can provide valuable clues.
To start with the Chersonese, in 453, 452 and 451, the main unit is the
Cherronesitai, paying 18 talents, though Alopeconnesus also seems to
have been named in 451. For 450 we have no evidence. In 449 the
Cherronesitai pay 13 talents, 4,840 drachmae, Alopeconnesus 3,240
drachmae. In 446 (on the dating adopted here) the Cherronesitai are
joined at least by the Limnaei and Elaeus, and after 445 we can see fairly
regularly that the peninsula is divided into six paying units, never paying
more than 2 talents, 2,500 drachmae in all before the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War. It is a reasonable inference that Pericles’ campaign
and resettlement belongs to 447. This is also the most likely year for the
casualty list M— L 48, in which 28 Athenians, including the general
Epiteles, died in the Chersonese, 1 2 at Byzantium, 19 in ‘the other wars’,
with an epigram on those who died by the Hellespont. That the sharp
reduction in tribute is due entirely to the settlement of Athenian citizens
cannot be affirmed; there may have been a more careful assessment of the
area’s resources and an allowance for services which we cannot
identify. 37

On the evidence of reduced tribute, Plutarch’s cleruchy to Naxos
should be before spring 447, since her tribute does not vary thereafter,
and the cleruchy to Andros precisely between spring 450, when she pays
1 2 talents, and spring 449, when she pays 6. More complex problems are
raised by Lemnos. Settled by Athenians before the foundation of the
League, 38 she is found paying 9 talents in 451. By 446, the tribute is
entered to two states, Hephaestia and Myrina, and the total of the two
never exceeds 4 \ talents. Though there is no direct evidence (Thuc.
vn. 5 7.2 and Paus. 1.28.2 may be relevant), it has been held 39 that the
settlement was reinforced, possibly in 450, by new settlers from Athens
and that the tribute was reduced to compensate. It does not seem a
sensible solution to create a community composed entirely of Athenians,
some of whom were liable to tribute and some not, and our understand-
ing of the position remains unclear.

It has been held that the Athenians drew a rigid distinction between a
colony (anoLKia), which became a new state, and a cleruchy, which did
not. This seems unlikely, since there are variations in terminology in the
texts which cannot be explained away, and fluidity in nomenclature and
in practice, for example, in what legal cases went to Athens, is to be

37 S eeATL hi 45—6; Kahrstedt 1954 (f 39) 15—23; Brunt 1966 (e 13) 79; Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 160.

38 See CAH iv 2 298-9.

39 ATL in 290-4; Ehrenberg 1952 (e 21) 146—9= 1965 (a 32) 250-3; Brunt 1966 (e i 3) 80—1.

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THE EMPIRE ESTABLISHED 129

expected. 40 It is from a text about an apoikia, Brea, that we get our most
detailed information of what went on at a settlement (M-L 49 = IG i 3 46;
IG i 3 47 is a similar text). The colony is to set out within thirty days of the
passing of the decree. There will be a founder and a board of ten to
distribute the land, except that already held by gods. The religious duties
of the colonists to Athens are prescribed, and defence by their neigh-
bours is arranged. Those currently away from Athens on an expedition
can join if they arrive in Brea within thirty days of their return. There
seems to be some discussion of qualification for joining on the basis of
the Solonian property classes; it is unclear whether the aim is to provide
for poor £ eugitai as well as thetes or to block the possibility of richer
absentee landlords. 41

We have already spoken of the confused picture provided by the lists
of 447 and 446 (or 448 and 447). The list of 447 is well preserved, but
below average in terms of number of names. At Jeast ten states made
short payments, and it is particularly attractive to link a confused pattern
at Byzantium with the casualties there. A case can be made for saying that
partial payments and absences are more frequent in the Hellespont than
elsewhere, which fits the epigram on M-L 48. Eight states seem to have
paid late, including three substantial island payers, Cythnus, Carystus
and Ceos, and, above all, Mende (including Scione) with its 1 5 talents.
The influence of Potidaea, the Corinthian colony absent from all lists
until after the Thirty Years’ Peace, is to be suspected. 42

The greater part of the list for the next year ( A TL 1 and 11 List 8 = IG
i 3 26 5 ) follows the order of its predecessor very closely indeed, but it also
has a substantial appendix, which seems to have recorded back payments
and supplementary payments from the previous year as well as supple-
mentary payments for the current year. Three entries, very abnormally,
record payments in the field, one, from Abdera, at Ei'on, two at Tenedos.
These were presumably Athenian bases of the year. It has been held 43
that payment in the field was more widely spread and that many of the
partial payments and absences of this year really represent such pay-
ments, belatedly reported to Athens. However, such a pattern would in
itself suggest extensive military operations, and a simpler view is to be
preferred. 44 Athens was attempting to reimpose the payment of tribute
after a year’s gap and met with considerable resistance, eventually

40 ATL hi 284—6 argue for a rigid distinction, but see Ehrenberg 195 2 (e 21)= 1965 (a 32) 245-
5 3; Brunt 1966 (e 13).

41 The name Brea seems to be Celtic for a settlement. The colony was mentioned in literature
(Steph. Byz. s.v.; Cratinus f 426 K— A), but, beyond the fact that it was in the Thracian area, its
situation is uncertain. Letter-forms place the text in the 440s, and it may have been the settlement
among the Bisaltai mentioned by Plutarch and abandoned after the foundation of Amphipolis; M— L
pp. 1 3 2f; Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 158-9; but see Asheri 1969 (e 2).

42 Reasonable doubts are also possible about the presence of Miletus, Colophon and Aegina.

43 A TL hi 59-60.

44 Wade-Gery 1945 (e 87) 226-8; Meiggs 1963 (e 52) 16-18; M-L p. 1 3 5; Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3) 1 56.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

quelled. By the time the books were closed for 446, the number of
defaulters was much reduced. Precision about the continuing absentees
is impossible: there may still be trouble in the Hellespont and the
Thraceward area, and there is no evidence that Aegina, which had made
a short payment in 449, had resumed payment. 45

It is tempting to link the tighter collection of the second list with a
preserved decree which lays down the procedure for the despatch of
tribute in some detail (M— L 4 G = IG i 3 34). Its proposer was called
Cleinias, and this could be the father of the great Alcibiades, killed at
Coronea in spring 446. The identification would provide a firm terminus
ante quern , but the decree has no clear early letter-forms, and difficulty has
been found in a casual reference which puts on the same footing as
offences about tribute offences concerning the despatch of ‘the cow and
the panoply’; it is argued that this became a universal obligation only in
425 (see p. 421); debate about the date is likely to continue. 46 The
substantial point which turns on it is the spread of Athenian officials in
the empire, since the opening clause seems to imply that ‘the magistrates
in the cities’, who may be, but are not necessarily, Athenians, and the
‘supervisors’ ( krtiaKo-noi ), who are, are fairly widespread. On the
orthodox dating of the Miletus Decree (above, p. 5 8), we have already
seen such a board in action.

Athenian magistrates appear, even less equivocally, in a decree which
is even more controversial in its dating (M-L 45). We have fragments of
six copies of a decree ordering the use of Athenian coinage, weights and
measures and forbidding the coinage of silver by allied cities. The decree
itself provides for its exhibition in the Agora of each city, and this will be
done by the Athenians if the city does not. This seems to have happened
at Cos, where a copy has been found in Attic lettering and dialect. If it
had been found at Athens, it would certainly have been dated to the early
440s, and many would prefer to date the decree then; before the Cos
fragment was found, it was assumed that the decree did not long precede
a parody of it in 414 (Ar. Birds 1040-1). Prolonged study of the decree
itself and of the coinages which it should have affected has led to no
agreed result. 47

45 The fragmentary decree IG i 3 38 may reflect trouble with Aegina. That the patchy record in
Thrace, particularly at Argilus, is connected in some way with the colony at Brea (p. 129) is a
plausible speculation.

46 Besides M—L 46 and the literature cited there, see Mattingly 1970 (c 143) 1 29-33; Meiggs 1972
(e 5 3) 166-7; Schuller 1974 (e 78) 21 2—1 3.

47 For the coinages see Robinson 1949 (e 71); Barron 1966 (c 181) 50-93; Erxleben 1970 (e 22)
66—132; Carradice, ed. 1987 (a i6). It now looks as if coinage in northern Tfreece was uninterrupted
until the Chalcidic revolt or the arrival of Brasidas. A surprising deviation by Chios into electrum
coinage (Barron 1966 (c 181) 86—7 and 1986 (e 9) 96-7) is at present counter-balancing evidence for
an early date for the decree, but N. M. Hardwick tells me that he has a different view of the relation of
this electrum issue to the Chiote silver. For recent general treatments of the dating problem, see
Schuller 1974 (e 78) 21 1 — r 7; Lewis 1987 (e 42); Mattingly 1987 (e 50).

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THE EMPIRE ESTABLISHED I 3 I

To forbid the allies to coin their own silver is clearly a political act of a
fairly demonstrative nature. 48 Insistence on the use of Athenian coinage
is scarcely less so, but administrative convenience will also have been
relevant. The growth of Athenian power produced inter-state monetary
transactions on a scale hitherto quite unknown in the Greek world. The
advantages of a uniform system of exchange in these transactions will
have been obvious. 49 Electrum was accepted as tribute in 45 3 ( IG i 3 259
postscript 10— 1 3), and there may have been later payments in it, 50 but the
74 Lampsacene staters and 27^ Cy2icene staters which were acquired by
the Parthenon commissioners in 447 remained unused throughout their
accounts. Life would be much easier for Athenian financial officials and
commanders if they were working with one coinage only, and it has been
plausibly suggested 51 that the Athenians recoined the whole contents of
the Delian League treasury when they took it over. Similar arguments
will apply to the weights and measures, rather neglected in modern
scholarship. Whether Athens was making special concessions to indivi-
dual states about the amount of corn they would be allowed to import
from the Black Sea (M-L 65 = IG i 3 61.34-6, IG i 3 62) or acquiring
provisions, an agreed standard would be helpful. 52 We need not imagine
any intention of creating a common market or of interfering extensively
in private transactions. This line of thinking supports an early date for
the decree; by 418 the Treasurers of Athena are disbursing electrum
(M-L 77 = IG 1 3 370. 14-1 5)-

Thucydides (1.77. 1) presents an Athenian embassy at Sparta in 432
defending itself against criticisms of Athenian conduct in legal matters,
and a war-time author ([Xen.] Atb.Pol. 1.16) says that the Athenians are
blamed for forcing the allies to sail to Athens for lawsuits. The
complications of what may have happened in commercial cases lie
beyond our present scope; 53 it is doubtful whether Athenian provisions
here should be thought of as instruments of empire, except in so far as the
right to proceed in particular courts is included among the privileges
given to particular foreigners. More straightforwardly, we have refer-
ences (M— L 5 2 = IG i 3 40.71-6, cf. IG i 3 96.6-8) in which cases involving
particular penalties, death, confiscation of property, loss of citizen
rights, exile, seem to be transferred to Athens; one literary reference
from war-time (Antiphon v.47) casually asserts that no city can inflict the

48 Finley 1965 (a 41) 22—4, and 1973 (l 39) 168-9.

49 Parallel difficulties will readily occur to the reader. I have in mind the elaborate testing of
grades of silver at Persepolis (Cameron 1948 (a 14) 200—3) and the difficulties which the fourth-
century administrators of the rebuilding of the Delphic temple got into with exchange rates (CID 11,
62, ha. 5-13; see Bousquet 1985 (c 118).

50 See Eddy 1 97 3 (e i 9), arguing that such payments seem to be confined to the periods before 446
and after 430 and suggesting that this is the effective period of the Coinage Decree.

51 Starr 1970 (c 197) 64—72, important for the whole question.

52 An excellent treatment along these lines in Martin 1985 (c 194) 196-207; sec also Lewis 1987 (e

42). 53 de Ste Croix 1961 (e 76) 95-1 12; Gauthier 1972 (l 57) 1 57-65.

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6 . THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

death penalty without Athenian consent. These restrictions seem to
come in during our present period; in the first reference, of 446/5 , Chalcis
is told that she can conduct her own legal procedures, except in cases
involving exile, death and loss of citi2en rights; these are to be
transferred to Athens ‘according to the decree of the demos’, and it is
easier to think that this is a general decree which has already been made
for all the cities rather than a decree particular to Chalcis. 54

This is not a simple assertion of dominance. Except in the rare cases
where an entire population was expelled, Athens managed to control her
subjects through her sympathizers. Identified with the ruling power,
they would need all the protection they could get. As it happens, we have
no fifth-century evidence for the violence sometimes visible in the milder
atmosphere of the fourth-century confederacy, 55 but we cannot doubt
that some occurred. From about 450 we find Athenian decrees for
foreigners providing that, if they get killed, the punishment will be the
same as if an Athenian gets killed; more precise texts suggest that the city
in which the event occurred was liable to a fine of 5 talents. 56 More subtle
action could be undertaken through the courts in the cities, 57 and the
most effective protection which Athens could offer her friends was to
limit the penalties which could be inflicted on them there. 58 She could
not contemplate a situation in which a squadron might arrive at a town
and enquire for the Athenian proxenos, only to learn that he had been
executed the previous week for, say, impiety.

For us, these developments can only be dimly seen. We are fleshing the
bare, chaotic figures of the tribute quota-lists with inference from the
institutions which we see developing. As Athens moved to consolidate
her control in the changed circumstances after the end of the Persian
War, there will have been recalcitrance, more or less severe. In 447
thirty-one Athenians died, at Byzantium and in the ‘other wars’ (M— L
48), in what may have been little more than street-fighting. Friends who
were prepared to accommodate themselves to the realities of power were
found almost everywhere; those who were not had gone into exile.
Athenian magistrates and, doubtless, garrisons were placed here and
there. Cleruchies added stability to the situation as well as satisfying land
hunger at home. Whatever the dating of the Cleinias Decree or the
Coinage Decree, it still appears that most of the essential tools of

54 For general decrees applying to the whole empire, cf. M-L 65 = JG i 3 61.13— 16, 41-46. de Ste
Croix 1961 (e 76) 268—80 is the best treatment of the legal instruments of empire; cf. Schuller 1974(5
78)48-54.

ss The Athenian amphictyones driven out of the temple of Delian Apollo and beaten (Tod, GHI
125. 1 36-7); an Athenian proxenos killed on Ceos, even before more extensive disorders (Tod, GHI
142.33-40). 56 Meiggs 1949 (e 5 ia); de Ste Croix 1961 (E76) 268.

57 Cf. Thuc. hi. 70. 3— 5 for political litigation, direct and indirect.

58 This is essentially the explanation offered by [Xen.] Ath.Pol. 1.16.

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446 B.C.

Athenian control were in use by 446. It is of course the fate of controls to
produce more recalcitrance waiting for an opportunity.

1 1 1. 446 b. c.

Although Athens had made her attempt to bolster the Phocian position
in Delphi (above, p. 127), most effort was going into sustaining her naval
empire. Such control as had been exercised over the Locrians by the
taking of hostages (p. 1 1 5) had been dropped or had become ineffective,
and, by the spring of 446, 59 former exiles were once more in control in
north-west Boeotia, notably at Orchomenus and Chaeronea. Something
needed to be done. Pericles was later said to have been sceptical (Plut.
Per. 18.2—3), but Tolmides took a thousand Athenian hoplites, sup-
ported by an allied force on which we have no detail (Phocian
cooperation at least may be inferred), and moved on Chaeronea, seizing
some of its inhabitants and leaving a garrison there. As he withdrew,
doubtless without some of the allies with whom he had been operating,
he was caught near Coronea by a mixed force from Orchomenus, the
Locrians, Euboean exiles, doubtless plentiful in Boeotia at the time, and
‘others of the same mind’, under the command of one Sparton (Plut.
Ages. 19.2), presumably from his name, a Theban. Tolmides himself and
other Athenians, notably Cleinias father of Alcibiades, were killed; the
rest were captured. 60 In order to recover the prisoners, the Athenians
agreed to evacuate Boeotia completely; Plataea, Eleutherae and Oropus
remained under their control. The exiles returned, and the cities once
again became autonomous. 61 There will have been scores to settle and
thinking to do about the future; no Boeotian activity is visible for the rest
of the year. How soon the federal constitution described in the Hellenica
Oxyrhynchia and alluded to by Thucydides was reorganized or estab-
lished we cannot tell. It is noteworthy that for the rest of the century the
only coinage in Boeotia is that of Thebes. 62

The Euboean exiles had seen what could be done, and revolt spread.
On the chronology of the quota-lists adopted here, the cities of Euboea
paid their tribute normally at the Dionysia of spring 446, 63 but they went
into revolt fairly rapidly thereafter. We hear nothing of the cleruchies

59 See Chronological Notes, p. 502.

60 The casualty list which bears an epigram generally attributed to Coronea seems to have had a
maximum of 850 names, say j jo-8jo(Bradeen 1964 (c 1 19) 21-9; Clairmont 1983 (k 17) 164 is not
quite certain that the name-lists belong to the epigram). If this was 446, there will have been many
other casualties in places other than Coronea, and the Athenian reaction presupposes that the
proportion of those captured among the thousand was large. Thuc. 111.67.3 suggests that the
Boeotians had casualties too. 61 For all this, see Thuc. 1113, 111.62.5, 67 .3, iv.92.6.

w For more detailed discussion of these events, see Buck 1 979 (f 1 1) 1 j 0-60. The evidence for the
city and federal constitutions comes mostly from Hell. Oxj. 16 (11); it will be discussed in CAHv t 2 ,
ch. 1 1. 63 Chalcis is not certain, but likely.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

established by Tolmides (p. 6o); we do hear of the massacre of the crew of
an Athenian ship at Hestiaea (Plut. Per. 23.3). Presumably the exiles
found sufficient discontent to exploit towards their own return and a
breaking of ties with Athens; at Chalcis the movement could be
identified with the landed aristocracy of the hippobotai.

Pericles had already crossed to Euboea with an Athenian army when
even worse news came. Megara had revolted, with support from
Corinth, Sicyon and Epidaurus; most of the Athenian garrison there had
been killed, though Athenian forces held out at the ports of Nisaea and
Pegae. There is no word here of Megarian exiles being active or of any
change of constitution; simple resentment of Athens seems to have been
the driving force. 64 This was a strategic disaster. Control of the Megarid
was a substantial inhibition to any Peloponnesian move north of the
Isthmus. 65 The Five Years’ Truce had expired or was expiring, and a
Peloponnesian invasion of Attica was expected. Pericles rapidly returned
from Euboea, and a counter-move against Megara was devised. 66
Andocides (grandfather of the orator) took three tribes, won a victory
over the Megarians and based himself on Pegae.

He was cut off by the arrival of a Peloponnesian force, which must
have come through Megara itself, and which rapidly penetrated into
Attica as far as Eleusis and the Thriasian Plain. He was forced to extricate
himself by a long, circuitous, but apparently undisturbed, march
through Boeotia; his movements are only known from the gravestone of
Pythion, a Megarian who died in Athens, claiming to have guided his
march (M— L 51).

The Peloponnesian force was commanded by Plistoanax son of
Pausanias, not the elder king, Archidamus; we can only speculate about
the reasons. 67 Plistoanax was well under thirty, 68 and was provided with
advisers, notably Cleandridas (see p. 105; Plut. Per. zz.z 69 ). We have no
information about the size of his force, but it seems to have been a full

64 For discussion of the Megarian revolt and campaign see Legon 1981 (f 45) 192-9. He treats
Megara as an oligarchy throughout; I would be inclined to make the opposite assumption. Megara
was clearly a democracy in 424 (Thuc. iv.66). There had been a democratic coup some time before
this; the question is whether it had instituted the democracy or intensified it. de Ste Croix 1972 (G 36)
243 n. 25 argues from Ar. Ach. 7 5 5 that Megara was more oligarchic than democratic in 426/5; this
will not bear much weight. Either Megara revoked as a democracy in 446 and remained one, with
Spartan tolerance, or became one before 424, with Spartan indifference. In view of Sparta’s general
preference for oligarchies (cf. Thuc. 1.19, 144.2), 1 find the first alternative slightly easier; the
Megarian democracy had proved its reliability. 65 de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 190-}.

66 This counter-move is not in Thucydides, but Ephorus had it (Diod. xn.5) and M— L 5 1, on
which the text chiefly depends, confirms him. Since it appears from Diodorus that Ephorus had the
order - revolt of Megara, Spartan invasion of Attica, battle of Coronea, revolt and suppression of
Euboea, Thirty Years’ Peace — confirmation is certainly needed.

67 Andrewes ap. White 1964 (f 71) 140 n. 3; de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 142; Lewis 1977 (a 76) 46

with n. 138. 68 White 1964 (f 71) 140 — 1.

69 de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 197 n. 95 suggests that he was ephor this year.

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446 B. C.

135

league levy; no military difficulty is mentioned (Thuc. 11.21 is slightly
fuller than 1.1 14.2; cf. v.16.3). Nevertheless, he went no further than the
Peloponnesian invasion sixty years before, which had broken up for
rather more public reasons (CAH iv 2 308, 361), and went home. 70
Contemporaries were quite clear what had happened. Plistoanax and
Cleandridas had been bribed. Details of their punishment are given
variously, but both went into exile, Plistoanax to Arcadia, Cleandridas to
Italy. 71 . On the Athenian side, Pericles’ claim at an audit that he had spent
10 talents ‘on necessary purposes’ was famous in the 420s (Ar. Clouds
859) and presumably already bore the interpretation we find later.
Money may well have passed, but there was surely also some talk about
the lines which a more permanent settlement between Athens and the
Peloponnesian League might take. The real mystery is what Pericles said
to induce his opponents to abandon the protection they were in effect
providing for the Euboeans. 72

With the principal threat disposed of, Pericles returned to Euboea.
Plutarch (Per. 23.3) says he took 5,000 hoplites and fifty ships. The latter
detail is surprising, since there is no reason to think that the Euboeans
had any substantial naval force; it might suggest that the loyalty of one or
more of the remaining naval allies was not beyond doubt. The revolt
collapsed. There was no forgiveness for the Hestiaeans, held to have
committed murder (p. 1 34). They were expelled, going by agreement to
Macedonia (Theopompus FGrH 1 1 5 f 387), and were totally replaced by
a new settlement of Athenians (2,000: Theopompus loc.cit., 1,000: Diod.
xn. 22. 2); 73 one of the new settlers, Hierocles, had been active in
producing oracles during the crisis (M— L 5 2 = /G i 3 40.64-7; Ar. Peace
1047). The other cities were allowed terms. At Chalcis, the hippobotai
were expelled (Plut. Per. 23.4), but otherwise Athens was merely politely
firm. A very well-preserved text (M-L 5 2 = IG i 3 40) gives us the terms
of the oaths to be exchanged. The Chalcidian oath was to be sworn by all
of military age; failure to swear would involve loss of civic rights and
confiscation of property. The expressions of loyalty required were
extreme, and the loyalty was only to Athens; uniquely in such texts, there
is no mention of Athens’ allies. 74 In return for loyalty, the Athenian
Council and jurymen promised the continued integrity of Chalcis, due
legal procedure in dealing with the state and its citizens, and a hearing
when it was asked for. The oaths exchanged with Eretria were identical

70 Diodorus (xii.6.i) says that much land was ravaged and a fort besieged. On the topography of
the campaign see also Hammond 197} (a 54) 455-4.

71 Busolt 1895—1904 (a 12) hi 1, 428 argued that Plistoanax was condemned to death; see de Ste

Croix 1972 (g 56) 198. 72 See de Ste Croix 1972 (g 56) 197—200.

73 For the regulations governing the new settlement see IG i 3 41 and McGregor 1982 (c 141).

74 Meiggs 1972 (e 55) 179, 579—82.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

(IG i 3 39). Hostages had already been taken and would for the present be
kept ( IG i 3 40.47— 5 2 75 ). The clause defining the limits of Chalcis’ own
jurisdiction we have already seen (p. 1 3 2). The most difficult clause (lines
52—7) maintains Chalcis’ right to tax the foreigners in Chalcis, except
those taxed by Athens or given immunity by her. Discussion of this has
been linked with the question of whether there was now new Athenian
settlement at Chalcis. The weight of the evidence seems against it, at least
in the form of a cleruchy, of which we have no clear contemporary trace.
But, when we eventually get evidence for the tributes of Chalcis and
Eretria after 446, there has been a fall, and it is tempting to believe that
the Athenians used the land of the hippobotai for something. 76 Assign-
ment to various gods, leasing (cf. IG i 3 41 8), perhaps even simple sale, are
not to be excluded, and the events of 446 will have produced exiles to
whom Athens owed a debt and a home. 77 The Chalcis Decree ends with
an injunction to the generals to keep a watch on Euboea. Athens had had
a severe fright, and was glad to perform the sacrifices recommended by
Hierocles’ oracles. The generals were given that task as well, and
required to find the money for them.

A contemporary poem is harder to interpret in detail, but should not
be forgotten. Pythian vm 78 is Pindar’s last dated poem, for an Aeginetan
who won at Delphi in late summer 446 (did the Phocians still maintain
the control which the Athenians had given them?). That the poem ends
with hope for the freedom of Aegina is clear, and it is scarcely less clear
that Pindar takes pleasure in the fact that the Athenian disturbers of the
peace have been taught a lesson. But the victor seems to be warned
against dangerous thoughts; tranquillity, external and internal, is
recommended.

Peace negotiations between Athens and Sparta now continued. Callias
seems to have been the principal negotiator again (Diod. xn.7, which
adds an unknown Chares; perhaps also Andocides, cf. Andoc. in. 6). He
was perhaps already Spartan proxenos at Athens. 79 The nature of the
negotiation may have been unfamiliar. On our evidence, this is the first
generation which had to face the problems of regulating peace outside
the framework of an alliance or permanent friendship. The arrangements
took their name ( spondai ) from the libations which reinforced the oath-
taking, and seem to have been developed from the short periods of truce
already used during major festivals (cf. e.g. IG i 3 6.b 8—47). The Argives

75 See Garlan 1965 (a 44) 332—8.

76 Cf. Ael. VH vi. i, though this probably refers to the cleruchy of 506 ( CAH iv 2 308).

77 ATL in 294-7; Brunt 1966 (e 13) 87-9; Mciggs 1972 (b 53) 566-9; Erxicben 1975 (e 23). For
the Chalcis Decree in general, see Balcer 1978 (e 4).

78 Wilamowitz 1922 (j 1 10) 439-45; Wade-Gery 1958 (a izi) 250-2, 265-6; Lloyd-Jones 1982 (j
72) 158-62.

79 Cf. Xen. Hell, vi.3.4, where his grandson stresses his own role in making peaces with Sparta.

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446 b. c.

’37

had sought such arrangements with Sparta in 481 (Hdt, vn.149.1), in
effect a guarantee that Sparta would not attack them for a generation, but
the first which we hear of are the Five Years’ spondai between Athens and
Sparta in 451 (Thuc. 1.112.1) and the Thirty Years’ spondai between
Sparta and Argos in 45 1/0 (Thuc. v. 14.4, 28.2; Bengtson 1962 (a 3) no.
144). The Athenians felt later, and rightly, that they had been under the
heavier pressure to make peace (Thuc. iv.21.3), and made further
territorial concessions, handing over Nisaea and Pegae, the two ports of
Megara, Achaea and Troezen. 80 Otherwise each side kept what it held.
The essential clause was that neither side was to make an armed attack on
the other, if the latter was willing to go to arbitration. 81 Lists of allies
were appended to the treaty, which allowed for the possibility of further
adhesions to either side, but Athens seems to have been barred from full
alliance with Argos. Whether anything was said explicitly in the treaty
about the autonomy of the allies on either side, either generally or
specifically about Aegina (cf. Thuc. 1.67.2), remains unclear; there was a
clause in the Peace of Nicias providing for the autonomy of certain cities,
provided they paid Athenian tribute (Thuc. v.18.5), and there may have
been one here. The duration was fixed at thirty years. Events would
show that the treaty was very far from watertight, but deficiencies of
detail in the drafting were less important than the unlikelihood that the
arbitration clause would work.

To say that Sparta thus recognized the Athenian empire is to make a
point which appears in no ancient source (even Thuc. 1.69). It seems that
the Spartans felt that they had done well to confine Athens to her proper
sphere, and, although Plistoanax and Cleandridas went into exile, 82 there
is no trace at Sparta of doubt about the Peace. Athens had renounced
meddling on the mainland, and the freeing of the Megarid and Boeotia
had made Attica much more vulnerable to invasion if there was future
misbehaviour. To maintain pressure of a type which would threaten the
naval empire would be beyond Sparta’s powers and aspirations. The
Peace may well have said something to clear Spartan consciences about
such clear interests as Aegina and Potidaea. In effect, the dualism of
Cimon’s aspirations, Sparta to dominate by land, Athens by sea, was
being accepted on both sides.

There is little sign of dissatisfaction among Athens’ Aegean allies, and
Athens seems to have made adjustments in the light of the new situation.
Tribute was paid in spring 445 on the basis of a new, conciliatory,
assessment. About thirty states have their tributes reduced, and in some

80 For the terms of the Peace, see Bengtson 1962 (a 3) no. 1 56; de Ste Croix 1972 (c 36) 293-4.

81 Thuc. vii. 1 8 . 2; de Ste Croix 1972 (c 36) 259; I am less confident than the latter that this was a
single sentence in the original.

82 The trial seems to have been some months after the Peace; Gomme, HCT m 664.

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138 6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

cases the reduction is unequivocal. The states of Rhodes, for example,
were paying in the late 440s about three-fifths of their tribute before the
Peace. In other cases, there may be compensation for Athens. Potidaea
appears for the first time as a tribute-payer; we know that she continued
to receive magistrates from Corinth. Given the relations between Athens
and Corinth before 446, the standard view 83 that she had been a ship
contributor up to this point does not seem attractive; that she started to
pay has something to do with the Peace. But there are reductions
elsewhere on the Pallene peninsula which precisely balance the new 6
talents from Potidaea; we cannot tell what is going on. Only three rises
break the pattern. The most noticeable is Thasos, jumping from 3 to 30
talents. In the general context this can hardly be punitive. It has generally
been supposed that she has had land or mines restored to her; 84 it may
rather be that money which she had been paying as indemnity is now
being paid as tribute. 85

In terms of actual payment record the picture is quiet. There are minor
pu2zles. Euboea may have taken time to settle, and there is only one
recorded payment, from the Cenaeum peninsula, in the lists of 445 and
444. A case has been made for renewed trouble in Miletus, where there is
no recorded payment in 445 , 444 or 443, but it is not totally cogent. 86 A
practically unique entry shows the Lycians and their co-contributors
paying 10 talents in 445. But, compared with what one might have
deduced from the literary evidence (Thuc. 1.96, 11. 13), tribute is not very
large. A strong case can be made 87 for supposing that the actual
collection was only 376 talents in 443, which compares well with the
calculation of 388 talents which can be made for 432.

IV. AFTER THE PEACE

Whether because of the condemnation of Plistoanax and Cleandridas or
for other reasons as well, the Athenians may not have been confident that
the Peace would hold. The evidence for their doubt lies in Pericles’
sponsorship of a middle Long Wall (see p. 208, Fig. 25), not finished
until 443 (PI. Gorg. 455c; Plut. Per. 1 3.7-8; the date from IG i 3 440.1 27).
The events of 446 had shown an awkward gap in the strategic theory
which had built the Long Walls. With Euboea in revolt, Athens had had
nowhere to send its flocks, even if there had been more time for
preparation, and the Spartans had actually arrived at a time when the
main land force was out of the city. The middle wall would at least meet

83 ATL hi 267—8.

84 Nesselhauf 1933 (e 57) 1 14; ATL in 259. 85 Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3) 85— 6.

86 Earp 1954 (e 17); Barron 1962 (e6); Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3), 563-5; Picrart 1969, 1974, 1983, 1985
(e 59-61); Robertson 1987 (e 70; see p. 590. 88).

87 M-L p. 88.

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AFTER THE PEACE

1 39

such a difficulty as the latter, since it would make it possible to
concentrate the wall garrison, a more economical use of troops than
manning the Phaleric Wall. Progress was apparently slow (Cratinus f
326 K— A), as the danger receded, and we have no evidence that the wall
was ever used.

Meanwhile the Acropolis building programme continued, evidently
without much interruption from external events. 88 We have already
considered the dedicatory aspects of the Parthenon. As it developed and
Phidias’ chryselephantine statue took shape, aspects of Athena became
stressed which went far beyond her traditional role in Athens. 89 Most
accounts of Athena’s cult, 90 by assuming that the robe offered to Athena
at the Panathenaea continued to go to the old olive-wood statue, leave
virtually no cult function for the new temple and statue; the evidence,
however, seems to suggest 91 that major parts of the cult were boldly
transferred to the new statue. The goddess created was very much one of
that generation, and the lines between Athena herself and her city are
very blurred. 92 To say that the Athenians built the Parthenon to worship
themselves would be an exaggeration, but not a great one. Pericles, as the
Funeral Speech (p. 396) makes clear, would probably have accepted that
the polis was the true object of devotion; one aspect of his polis is the
nature of the relationship between its citizens.

The unknown source of Plut. Per. 12. 4ff 93 attributes to Pericles
economic motives for the building programme, a desire to promote
employment and stimulate economic activity as a whole, a strange
foreshadowing of the Keynesian ‘multiplier’. The suspicion must be that
these motives are anachronistic, but they are as hard to match in later
ancient theory as in the Classical period. They make no appearance in
[Xen.] Ath. Pol. 1.13, where they might be expected, and, although
Aristotle {Pol. vii.i 3 1 3 b 1 8fT) is prepared to discuss building pro-
grammes as a way in which tyrants keep their subjects busy and poor, he
never contemplates democratic building as a way of making the demos
busy and rich. When Xenophon in the 350s ( Vect . 3. 12-13) advocates
public building, it is to provide income, not work. The specific point
made by Plutarch is that Pericles wanted the demos to have its share in the
fruits of empire, but did not wish it to get it in idleness. Anti-democrats
made it a principal charge against Pericles that he made the demos idle (PI.

88 Burford 196} (1 }8) 28-52.

89 Herington 1955 (k 39) ch. 7, but see Harrison 1957 (k 38).

90 E.g. Simon 1983 (k 85) 66. 9 * Lewis 1979-80 (k 57).

92 This would be particularly the case if the Panathenaic procession on the Parthenon frieze
depicted ordinary Athenians (so Brommer 1977 (1 27) 145-50; Simon 1983 (k 85) 58-72), a view
argued against by Boardman 1977 (1 18).

93 Meiggs 1963 (d 58) 42-3; Meiggs 1972 (e 55) 139-40; Andrewes 1978 (d 3); Ameling 1985 (c

*)•

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140

6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

Gorg. 515c); this is a defence, but we cannot fix its date. One ground for
believing that the passage is relatively early is the fullness and precision
of the list of trades involved; one would not have thought that they
would all have suggested themselves to a rhetorician of any very late
date. What proportion of citizens were engaged in them is perhaps
another matter.

For Plutarch the building programme lies at the centre of a political
struggle. There is enough earlier evidence to confirm that Cimon’s
political successor was his son-in-law or brother-in-law, Thucydides son
of Melesias of Alopeke, 94 a shade older than Pericles. His father had had
no political or military career that we know of, but had an international
reputation as a wrestling master; all his known pupils are Aeginetans,
which will at times have caused him embarrassment over his city’s
foreign policy. Thucydides, unlike Cimon, was more a politician than a
general, though he could be described as a man of many friends, inside
and outside Athens (PI. Meno 94d). Plutarch gives an anachronistic
oligarchic colouring to his political stance, which is contrasted with
Pericles’ lavishness towards the demos in providing spectacles, employ-
ment in the fleet, cleruchies and the building programme. Pericles’
enemies (vague at Plut. Per. iz.x, explicitly Thucydides at i4.i);are said
to have attacked the programme as a misappropriation of allied funds
and excessively lavish in itself; with money compulsorily contributed to
the war, the Athenians were gilding and embellishing the city like a
wanton woman, bedecking her with expensive stones and statues and
temples costing a thousand talents. Pericles’ reply was that no account
need be rendered to the allies, provided that they received the defence
that they were paying for; if the city had what was needed for the war, she
was entitled to use the surplus for creating an eternal glory and the
economic advantages which we have already considered.

There are certainly suspicious details in this. It is presupposed,
apparently, that the war is still on, which is a point against the Peace of
Callias for its critics and against the debate for its supporters; the point
might be mitigated by shifting the debate to the origins of the building
programme, not implausibly. There is certainly rhetorical exaggeration
in Pericles’ reply that the allies did not contribute horses, ships or
hoplites. Yet the core seems reasonable enough. We have seen that the
charge that the programme was financed from the League treasury is
true, and the complaint about the luxury of the new statues and buildings
might fit with what has been suggested above about the innovations in
the cult of Athena. These are credible issues, and Thucydides may well
have taken a different view from Pericles over relationships with the

94 Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 239-70; Davies 1971 (l 27) 250-5.

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AFTER THE PEACE

141

allies. There is less reason to believe that he had a distinguishable attitude
on relations with Sparta.

The course of the debate cannot be plotted in detail. It ended with
Thucydides’ ostracism, apparently in spring 443, and Pericles’ position
as leading man in Athens was apparently unchallenged thereafter. 95 The
precise date rests only on Plut. Per. 16.3; Pericles had fifteen years of
annual generalships after the ostracism. 96 Surviving ostraca of Pericles
are very rare, and such evidence as we have, mostly from unpublished
ostraca, suggests that Thucydides’ supporters tried to concentrate their
votes, not against him, but against Cleippides, only known from
literature as general in 428.

Other events can be associated with the year 443. It seems that, for no
very obvious reason, the quadrennial assessment of tribute was brought
forward one year, and the list of 442 shows some tightening of the book-
keeping. Organization of the lists by tribute districts is now formalized,
though there had been a considerable move to geographical order
earlier, and for two years the hellenotamiai employed a second secretary;
the poet Sophocles was their chairman for 443/2, and the spelling of
foreign names is improved.

More substantially, the archon-year 444/3 is the year of the final
foundation of Thurii, on the instep of Italy, under Athenian auspices
[Plut.] Mor. 835c). 97 Since the destruction of the great city of Sybaris in
510, the remnants of its population and the area around it had had a
chequered history, which we cannot recover in detail. 98 The situation
becomes clearer from 452 (Diod. xi.90.3— 4 and, for the later develop-
ments, xii.io-ii; for the numismatic evidence see Kraay 1976 (c 190)
173-4; see Fig. 4). Under an unknown Thessalos, there was then a
refoundation with citizens drawn from Laos and Posidonia. Suppressed
again by Croton, the exiles appealed to Sparta, which paid no attention,
and to Athens. In 446/5 Athens assumed responsibility, and refounded
Sybaris by sending ten ships; the coins of the new Sybaris have a very
Athenian Athena on their obverse. Further trouble followed over the
privileges claimed by the descendants of old Sybaris, who were expelled
(Diod. xii. 22.1). In 444/3 the settlement was renamed Thurii and given a
democratic constitution with ten tribes (Areas, Achaeis, Eleia, Boeotia,

95 The nature of his constitutional position is discussed in ch. 4.

96 This is not evidence that he failed to be elected in 444/3, as maintained by Wade-Gery 1958 (a
m) 240.

97 See Wade-Gery 1958 (a 121) 255-8; Ehrenberg 1948 (e 20); Smart 1972 (e 83) 138-9 with n. 71.

98 See CAH iii 2 .3, 1 84. Diod. xi.48.4 attests some kind of continuance in the time of Hieron. For
coinage at Laos (cf. Hdt. vi.2i), see Kraay 1976(0 190) 172—3, who also argues (p. 176) for a move to
Posidonia. Van Effenterre 1980 (f 22) 193-5 considers the possibility that M-L 10 is later than 5 10.
For an extreme view of a continuously prospering Sybaris, see Vickers 1985 (c 198) 36-7.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

Fig. 4. Silver coins ofSybaris and Thurii. (a, b) stater and diobol of about 450 b.c.; (r) drachma with
bull of Sybaris but the name now in Ionic letters and Athena head obverse, about 44; b.c. after
refoundation by Athens; ( d) drachma type changed about 440 b.c.; (r) stater with the new name,
about 440 b.c. (After Kraay 1976 (c 190) nos. 584-7, 728.)

Amphictyonis, Doris, las, Athenaeis, Euboeis, Nesiotis), which made
no provision at all for old Sybarites. The Athena head remained on the
coins. Among the colonists, at once or eventually, were Herodotus and
the family of the orator Lysias (originally Syracusan, but in exile at
Athens); Protagoras is said to have written the law code (Heracl. Pont.
ap. D.L. ix. 8. 50), and Hippodamus, the Milesian town-planner and
political theorist, also went there; he was surely responsible for the grid-
plan of the city which Diodorus describes.

Diodorus has only one refounding expedition, where modern scho-
lars, on the evidence of the coins, have two, and it is not certain where his
details belong. If he is correct in associating the sending of heralds to the
Peloponnese to invite settlers with an expedition led by Pericles’ seer
Lampon and Xenocritus, there is no ground for distinguishing two
types of Athenian thinking in the ventures. The only change was that the
original Sybarites proved indigestible. What began with Athens assert-
ing her position as a great Greek power in refounding a famous city
turned into an altogether new foundation, one of mixed origins, but in
which the Athenians were the largest identifiable element (cf. Diod.
xii. 3 5.2). Although many other states were represented, this is not
necessarily a sign of pure panhellenism; those who went from the
Peloponnese or from Boeotia may well have felt politically, as well as

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AFTER THE PEACE

economically, uncomfortable at home. Their gratitude to Athens wore
thin later (Diod. xii.35, cf. Thuc. vn.33.5, vm.35.1), but they were
taking part in a project in which Athens’ interests were all-important.
The colony was a cultural and political gesture, and may have had
economic motives as well; the plentiful timber supplies of Italy could
have been in view." That Athenian interest in the West was increasing in
this period is likely enough; the original Athenian treaty with Rhegium
on the toe of Italy seems to be near Thurii in date. 100

But the first event after the Thirty Years’ Peace thought worthy of
report by Thucydides is in 440, a war between Samos and Miletus about
Priene. This bordered the Samian possessions on the mainland, but was
an independent state, paying a regular tribute of one talent to Athens
until 44 1 . Miletus’ tribute may have been interrupted (see p. 138), but she
was paying again in 442. Samos had remained a ship contributor, under
an oligarchy. The claims and counter-claims are obscure for us, 101 but the
Milesians got the worst of the war and, supported by individual Samian
democrats, denounced the Samians to Athens. Athens’ case for interven-
tion was rather curious. Since her allies had sworn to have the same
friends and enemies, it could be held that wars within the empire were
against their oaths. The Peloponnesian League had never interpreted the
oath in that sense, but the Athenians now did. ‘Fighting each other’ is
given by Hermocrates at Thuc. vi.76.3 as one of the pretexts used by
Athens for subjecting her allies; this is the only instance we know, and it
may have been preceded by a Samian refusal to accept Athenian
arbitration (Plut. Per. 25.1). 102 An Athenian fleet 103 of forty ships went to
Samos, took a hundred hostages, depositing them on Lemnos, and set up
a democracy supported by an Athenian garrison. Samos retained her
fleet. 104

Some Samians fled to the mainland and applied to Pissuthnes, the
satrap of Sardis, for help. They raised 700 mercenaries and, coordinating
their plan with the Samian upper classes, crossed to Samos by night. An
attack on the demos was largely successful, the hostages were daringly
rescued from Lemnos (a round trip of 640 km or so), and Samos was in
revolt. The Athenian garrison and magistrates were handed over to
Pissuthnes . 105 An expedition was prepared against Miletus, evidence
both for the height of feeling among the Samians and their scepticism

99 Cf. Mciggs 1982 (l 99) 124—5.

100 This and a treaty with Leontini in Sicily were renewed together in 455/2 (M-L 65-4), but the
date of the original treaty with Leontini, probably earlier, is harder to fix; see Lewis 1976 (c 159).

101 See Meiggs 1972 (e 55) 428: the position of Marathesium, paying tribute for the first time,

probably, in 442. 102 de Ste Croix 1972 (c 36) 1 20-1.

103 Commanded by Pericles, according to Diod. xn.27.1 and Plut. Per. 25.2.

104 On this part of the story see Schuller 1981 (e 79). For the chronology, see p. 502.

105 For the implications of Pissuthnes* activities see Lewis 1977 (a 76) 59.

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144 6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

about the power of Athens to interfere. Athenian response was,
however, swift. Chios and Lesbos were summoned to help and a force
went to Caria to watch for any mobilization of the Phoenician fleet. With
a force of 44 ships, Pericles caught a Samian fleet of 70 ships returning
from Miletus and won a victory. Reinforced by 40 more ships from
Athens and 25 from Chios and Lesbos, the Athenians landed and started
a siege. At this point, reports of the approach of the Phoenician fleet
grew stronger, 106 and Pericles took 60 ships towards Caria. In his
absence the Samians broke out and did much damage to the remains of
the blockading squadron and their camp; for fourteen days they
controlled their home waters and replenished their supplies. On Pericles’
return the siege was resumed. Further reinforcements, 60 ships from
Athens, 30 from Chios and Lesbos, created an overwhelming force, and,
though the siege continued for some months, the Samians at last
surrendered. Their walls were demolished and their fleet handed over to
Athens, and they agreed to repay the cost of their subjection by
instalments; it is, however, by no rpeans clear that Athens continued her
attempt to impose democracy. 107 There had indeed been no sign that
democracy at Samos had deep roots; her sailors had fought well. If an
oligarchy remained, it was one without a fleet which had been forced to
give up mainland adventures. A settlement of exiles is later found at
Anaea on the mainland opposite.

One of the clearest indications of the incompleteness of Thucydides’
account of the Fifty Years is that the four hundred words which he
devotes to this episode contain no hint of an important event which he
refers to elsewhere (1.40.5, 41.2). The Peloponnesian League congress
met and was divided in its opinions as to whether to help the Samians; all
we know of the debate is that the Corinthians claimed to have spoken
against intervention and for the right of a great power to chastise its own
allies. It has been held 108 that, if the course of events was the same as that
in 432 (see below, p. 378), such a League meeting would have been
preceded by a decision of the Spartan Assembly that there was a prima
facie case for war. That is perhaps an extreme view, but it is reasonably
clear that Sparta at least thought that the opinion of her allies should be
tested. It should be even clearer that news of such a meeting will not have
encouraged Athenian belief in the durability of the Thirty Years’
Peace. 109

That the Samians had come near to taking the command of the sea

106 It is in fact not clear that it was ever mobilized at all {ibid.).

107 On the fragmentary epigraphic record of the treaty (M— L 5 6 = IG i 3 48) see also Fornara 1 979
(e 26), Bridges 1980 (c 123). On the constitution of Samos after 439, see Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 193—4
and Schuller 1981 (e 79) (democracy). Will 1969 (e 94) and Quinn 1981 (e 64) 13—19 (oligarchy).

108 Jones 1952—3 (e 38); cf. de Ste Croix 1972 (c 36) 200-3.

109 Th e Peloponnesians were mentioned in the treaty between Samos and Athens {IG i 3 48.7); we
cannot tell how.

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from Athens (Thuc. vm.76.4) is an exaggeration, but the situation had
been dangerous. Nevertheless, the possible intervention from Persia and
the Peloponnesians had not happened, and the Lesbian and Chian fleets
had answered Athens’ call. The Samians had been virtually isolated.
Only Byzantium, in an episode of which we know nothing whatever,
had joined the revolt and returned to allegiance; she may have been
moved by the change of sides by her mother-city Megara. The Athenian
empire had survived.

The Samian revolt is the latest event described by Thucydides before
the sequence which started in 435 and led to the outbreak of war. The
impression of a historical lull is heightened by a sheer accident; the
tribute quota-lists of 438, 437, 436, most of 435 and half of 434 have
been lost by the weathering of the stone. From the missing years, two
events emerge which, in their different ways, illustrate Athenian self-
assertion. 110

The first, the foundation of Amphipolis, has a clear date, the archon-
year 437/6 (Diod. xn.32.2; Schol. Aeschin. 11.31, cf. Thuc. iv. 102.3).
Athenian eyes had long been fixed on the area where the river Strymon
came down to the sea in a great bend. Now, after the failures of 476 (pp.
41-2) and 465 (p. 44), the dream became a reality. Hagnon, who had
already served in the Samian War, drove out the Edonians, built a wall
from river to river and founded a great city. The Strymon crossing was
in itself worth controlling, and by 424 the city was already a vital interest
for Athens (Thuc. iv.108.1), for its supplies of ship timber and its
financial resources (that is, principally, the gold mines of Mt Pangaeum).
Ten thousand settlers had been thought appropriate in 465, and we
should think of a similar number now, but we have very little infor-
mation about how they were made up. The Athenian element was not
large (Thuc. iv. 106. 1), and otherwise we only hear specifically of settlers
from Argilus (Thuc. iv. 103. 3);' 11 the dialect was the Euboean form of
Ionic (Tod, GHI 150), and doubtless Chalcidians from Thrace were
strongly represented. We have next to no information about the
constitution. 112

More shadowy is Pericles’ expedition to the Black Sea, briefly

110 It is tempting to add a third. At some time before 431, Athens intervened in north-west
Greece in a local quarrel between Ambracia and the Acarnanians, sending thirty ships under
Phormio; some Ambraciots were sold into slavery, and an alliance was made between Athens and
the Acarnanians (Thuc. 11.68. 2-9). Ambracia was a Corinthian colony with very close ties to her
mother-city (Graham 1964 (a 5 2) 138—40), and Corinth had been the only great power in the area.
There is no clear way to date the episode, but the early 430s seem most likely (Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3)
204).

111 Argilus was always hostile to the colony, and presumably lost land to it, since its tribute drops
from 1 talent in 437 to 1,000 drachmae in 432. (It is probably a stone-cutter’s error which shows it
paying 10J talents in 453; contra , Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 159 n. 3.)

112 iG r 3 47 may be an Athenian decree relevant to the foundation. For recent excavations see
Archaeological Reports 1976-7, 92; 1978— 9, 29-31; 1980-1,33; 1981-2,41; 1982-3,44—5; 1983-4,48-
9; 1984-5, 47-8.

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6. THE THIRTY YEARS’ PEACE

Fig. 5. Silver coin of Amisus, renamed
Piraeus. (After E. Babelon, Traite des
monnaies grecques et romaines (1901 — 19) 11
pi. 185, 1 x ; cf. B. V. Head, Historia
Numorum (1911) 496.)

described by Plutarch (Per. 20.1— 2). 1,3 With a large fleet, splendidly
fitted out, he attended to the needs of the Greek cities in a friendly way
and showed the greatness of Athenian power to the barbarians around
and their kings. The only detail is that he left thirteen ships at Sinope
with Lamachus, who assisted in driving out the tyrant Timesileos; 114 six
hundred volunteer Athenian settlers went to Sinope to take over the
property of the tyrant’s faction. We have no idea where else Pericles
went, though there is a strongish case for an Athenian settlement at
Amisus (Theopompus FGrH 1 1 5 f 389, Appian Bell. Mithr. 83; fourth-
century coins with an owl on the reverse ( HN 2 496) (Fig. 5) show it
renamed Piraeus). The corn supply from the Black Sea seems to have
been reliable thereafter and in the fourth century Athenian relations with
the Spartocid dynasty of the Crimea had long been good (see CAH vi 2 ,
chapter 1 ij), but there is no particular reason to associate the expedition
with the accession of Spartocus in 438/7 (Diod. xii.31.1).

A contemporary (Ion fr.16 ap. Plut. Per. 28.7) reports that, after the
Samian War, Pericles said that it had taken Agamemnon ten years to
capture a barbarian city, but that he had defeated the first and most
powerful of the Ionians in nine months. The remark was not likely to be
well received by panhellenists (cf. the comment of Cimon’s sister
Elpinice at Plut. Per. 28.6), and makes few appearances in the modern
literature. The year 446 had been a bad one, but in the ten years thereafter
Athens under Pericles had squashed a major revolt in the empire,
founded two great cities, dedicated the most splendid of temples with a
cult-statue of unparalleled splendour at the Great Panathenaea of 438
(Schol. Ar. Peace 605), and sailed on the track of the Argonauts. Pericles
was not a modest man, and there was nothing little about his ideas.

1.3 The approximate date of the expedition is not now in doubt, despite the attempt of AT L in
1 14— 17 to date it around 450. Besides arguments from the age of Lamachus, it is now virtually
certain that an Athenian casualty list of the 430s listed casualties ‘in [Sinjope’ ( iv [Eiv]6ttc 1) (new
fragment of Agora xvn 17 in Clairmont 1979(0 126) 123-6 and 1983 (k 17) 178—80; Clairmont’s view
that the stone was not inscribed until 43 1 is not convincing, but it certainly cannot go back into the
440s).

1.4 Timesileos seems to have gone to Olbia; see Vinogradov 1981 (p 69) ( SEG xxxi 701).

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CHAPTER 7

SICILY, 478-431 b.c.

D. ASHERI

After the battle of Himera in 480 (see CAH iv 2 771—5), Sicily was once
again divided into four main political blocs. The western corner of the
island was the ‘epicracy’, or dominion, of Carthage, with major centres at
Panormus, Solus and Motya, and no territorial changes despite the
Greek victory. The Elymian enclave, with its main cities of Segesta,
Eryx and Entella, also remained subject to Carthage, though culturally
hellenized, and Greek Selinus, while aspiring to neutrality, remained
subservient to Carthage as well. Although Punic Sicily flourished
throughout the fifth century, Carthage itself was notably absent from
Sicilian affairs. Greek Sicily also remained divided into its three epicra-
cies under their respective ruling dynasties: the Deinomenids at Syra-
cuse, the Emmenids at Acragas and the Anaxilads at Rhegium. To these
three all other Siciliote cities were subject; Syracuse controlled Naxus,
Leondni, Catana and Camarina; Acragas dominated Gela and Himera;
and Messana was united with Rhegium. The determining force was no
longer the Greek-Punic antagonism of the 480s, but the maintenance of
the balance of power between the two main epicracies, the Syracusan and
the Acragantine, the latent rivalry between them suddenly erupting in
unexpected ‘wars’. The Sicel (and Sican) heart of the island, separated
from, yet connected with, the Greek coastal fringe by a large hellenized
belt, remained unaffected by fifth-century changes, whereas the helle-
nized Sicel zones, especially the part subject to Syracuse in eastern Sicily,
were to play a role in an extraordinary though unsuccessful attempt at
autonomy.

A useful collection of sources (literary, epigraphic and numismatic) on Sicily in this period is
included in Hill, Sources 2 , Index v, pp. 361-4; for sources and bibliography on ancient sites see Manni
1981 (h 1 1); evidence from archaeology and air photography, indispensable and invaluable today,
will be found in section h of the Bibliography. The main narrative is to be found in the Sicilian
chapters of Diodorus Siculus (xi.38, 48-9, 31—3, 39, 66-8, 72—3, 76, 78, 86-92, xn.8, 26, 29-30),
mainly following Timaeus’ Histories (Books xi-xh; see fragments in FCrH 566). Diodorus’ dates
should often be taken as approximate, owing to his habit of bringing together under the same year
several events belonging to a longer period. The relevant odes of Pindar { 01 . i-vi, xn; Pjth. i-m;
Nem. 1 , ix; Istbm. 11 ), with their scholia, and Bacchylides {Epin. hi— v), as well as a few fragments of
Aeschylus and Simonides, reflect the opinion of foreign court guests on their hosts and on some of
the historical events mentioned in this chapter. Pausanias’ description of Sicilian dedications at
Olympia and Delphi and his data on Sicilian victors at panhellenic games add valuable information.

147

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7. SICILY, 478-43 I B.C

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SICILY IN THE AGE OF HIERO 1 49

Unquestionably, the central event of the period is the fall of the three
Greek tyrannies and the subsequent disintegration of their respective
epicracies. Yet its lasting effect was practically confined to the internal
affairs of the cities concerned. All major trends and structures of Sicilian
and Western history remained basically unaffected. Economic and
cultural prosperity, hellenization, the tendency towards the creation of
blocs and new epicracies, the drive of the latter to annexe the hellenized
Sicel belt, and, on a more comprehensive scale, the struggle for
hegemony on the Tyrrhenian Sea and the irreversible Etruscan decline —
such historical trends, though some of them temporarily halted by the
fall of the tyrannies, all emerged stronger than ever within a couple of
decades. Continuity prevailed over change in fifth-century Sicily. The
democracies had to conform to the rules of the game laid down in the age
of the tyrannies and determined by the given framework of economic
and political interests and powers.

I. SICILY IN THE AGE OF HIERO

After Gelon’s death in 478/7, his brother Hiero ascended the Syracusan
throne, according to the alleged Deinomenid rule of succession from
brother to brother. Hiero’s younger brother Polyzalos was married to
Gelon’s widow Damarete (the daughter of Theron of Acragas) and
received the governorship of Gela, at the time under Syracusan sover-
eignty. Polyzalos then gave his daughter from a previous wife to
Theron, thereby cementing relations with Acragas and the Emmenid
dynasty ( FGrH 566 f 93; Hill, Sources 2 b ioi). Tensions between the two
Deinomenid brothers must have arisen immediately. Though much
pleased to be addressed publicly by Pindar, his greatest court poet, as the
‘basileus who governs Syracuse’ (Fytb. 111.70) or the ‘tyramos, leader of the
people’ {ibid. 85), Hiero himself never used an official title or put his own
name on coins. Rather, he always signed himself modestly ‘Hiero, the
son of Deinomenes’, adding tactfully ‘and the Syracusans’ on official
dedications (M-L 29), and his coins were always ‘of the Syracusans’.
Polyzalos was a different character. He pompously dubbed himself ‘The
One who is Lord (favaaaoov) over Gela’ on the base of the famous
Delphic Charioteer (Hill, Sources 2 b ioi), and manifestly resented his
second-class position in the state. When Hiero tried to get rid of him by
sending him to war in Italy, Polyzalos returned to Gela victorious at the
head of a great army and joined forces with Theron. War between
Syracuse and Acragas was prevented, according to one version of the
story, at the last moment through the good offices of a common friend of
Hiero and Theron, the poet Simonides of Ceos. The crisis passed,
Polyzalos kept Gela, and the Grand Alliance between the Deinomenids
and the Emmenids was saved ( FGrH 566 f 93; cf. Diod. xi.48.3-8).

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IJO 7 - StdLY, 478-43 I B.C.

Hiero’s next problem was how to achieve Syracusan control over the
eastern and northern coasts of Sicily. The area was largely Sicel, with
four important Chalcidian cities peacefully coexisting with their helle-
nized neighbours: Naxus, Catana and Leontini on the eastern area, and
Himera, a dependency of Acragas, on the northern coast. Hiero soon
decided to resume Gelon’s policy of mass-deportation and resettlement.
In 476 the entire population of Naxus and Catana was transferred to
Leontini; Naxus apparently remained depopulated, while Catana was
resettled with 10,000 Dorian colonists and renamed Aitna. Chromios, a
brother-in-law of Gelon and an old partisan of the Deinomenid cause,
was appointed epitropos of Aitna until Hiero’s son, Deinomenes, came of
age (Diod. xi.49.1— 2; Pind. Pyth. 1; Nem. 1, ix, with scholia). The event
was celebrated by a series of tetradrachms and drachms, of which only
single specimens have survived, showing on the reverse a seated Zeus
‘Aitnaios’ holding thunderbolt and sceptre and a Syracusan quadriga on
the obverse. Contemporary sources are full of the praises of court poets.
Pindar calls Hiero ‘Aitnaios’ and ‘the renowned Founder of Aitna’, and
dedicated to Chromios two Nemean odes. Pindar was fond of the idea of
a Dorian community in Aitna ‘living in freedom according to the laws of
Hyllos’ rule’ (Pyth. 1.6 1), and even the Ionian Bacchylides was-enthusi-
astic about ‘well-built’ Aitna (fr. 20c. 7), and the Athenian Aeschylus
contributed a drama, The Aitnaean Women, written specially for the
occasion ( Vit.Aescb. 9). However, for a view of the less glorious side of
mass-deportation we must turn to later sources. Four main points clearly
emerge from Diodorus’ account of the foundation of Aitna (probably
derived from Timaeus): the Chalcidians were forcibly deported; Catana
was resettled by Hiero’s ‘own colonists’, 5,000 from Syracuse and as
many from the Peloponnese; 1 lots were distributed in the newly
delimited territory of Aitna, after it had been much enlarged through
expropriation of neighbouring Sicel lands; and finally, the unflattering
assumption was made that the real aim of the enterprise was to create a
ready base of loyal supporters and establish a Founder-cult of Hiero. In
any case, contrary to official expectations, Aitna had but a short and
precarious life. It began with an eruption of nearby Etna, 2 an ominous
event that greatly impressed both Pindar and Aeschylus, and ended in
461 with an outbreak of a different kind (see below, pp. i6if).

1 According to Schol. Pind. Pj/b. i 62 (120) b, settlers were brought from Gela, Megara and
Syracuse (but Megara ceased to exist c. 48 3). Evidence on Arcadian immigrants is relatively solid for
the first half of the century, e.g. Hagcsias of Stymphalus (Pind. Olymp. vi), Phormis of Maenalus
(Paus. v. 2 7. iff), Praxiteles ofMantinea (scc below, n. 8), and others (see Guarducci 1953 (h 2 3) and
1959-6° (c: 132) 270).

2 In 475, according to Thucydides’ informants (111.116.2); the Marmor Pdrium mentions an
eruption (the same or a previous one?) under the year 479/8 (see FGrH 239 a 52).

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SICILY IN THE AGE OF HIERO I5 1

Theron of Acragas was not to be outdone. He too must found, or at
least refound, a city, preferably a Chalcidian one. Himera was under his
sway, harshly governed by his son Thrasybulus. In the same year that
Aitna was founded, some harassed citizens of Himera secretly com-
plained to Hiero, a fatal faux pas that was immediately revealed to
Theron and branded subversive. The ‘plotters’, who were many, were
promptly arrested and either put to death or exiled. No better oppor-
tunity to ‘refound’ Himera could have been hoped for. Accordingly, all
the confiscated houses and lands of the dead or banished plotters were
granted to a group of settlers, mainly Dorian, who had been enrolled by
Theron for this purpose. Surprisingly enough, Diodorus tells us that the
new settlers lived on good terms with the surviving citizens of Himera
until the end of the century (xi.48.6-8, 49.3-4). If so, Himera, with its
mixed Ionian— Dorian population and dialect, and its mixed cults and
institutions, provides us with a remarkable example of peaceful coexist-
ence in a century marked by cruel episodes of ethnic antagonism. 3 By
now, all Sicilian coastal cities were Dorian: in two of them, Himera and
Messana, lived Chalcidian communities, and the inland Leontini became
an internment camp for all the surviving Ionians.

With the colonization of Aitna and Himera in 476, Messana found
itself surrounded. Left since the battle of Himera without Carthage, his
major ally, Anaxilas managed to survive by quickly switching to Gelon’s
side and giving his daughter in marriage to Hiero (Schol. Pind. Pjith.
1. 5 8); but he could not afford to conduct an independent foreign policy.
Inasmuch as Hiero’s best friends in southern Italy were Epizephyrian
Locri and the scattered Sybarite communities, Rhegium and Croton,
both substantial powers, found themselves in the grip of Syracuse.
Hiero’s dream of supplanting Rhegium on the Tyrrhenian Sea was
realized soon after Anaxilas’ death around 476 when a delegation from
Campanian Cumae asked Hiero for help against the Etruscans. A
Syracusan fleet put in immediately at Cumae, joined with local forces to
fight a naval battle, in which many Etruscan ships were destroyed, and
delivered Cumae from danger (Pind. Pjth. 1.7 1 with scholia; schol. to
ibid. 11. 1 ; Diod. xi.5 1). It was presumably in connexion with this famous
battle (474 b.c.) that an abortive attempt was made to garrison the island
of Pithecussae (Ischia), opposite Cumae, with Syracusan military settlers
(Str. v.4.9, p. 248). With Cumae and her new colony at Naples both
friendly to Hiero, the southern Tyrrhenian Sea was gradually becoming
a Syracusan lake.

3 Probably in the same year another plot was crushed by Theron; two Emmenids in exile, Capys
and Hippocrates, first occupied Camicus, a Sican town (the legendary capital of Kokalos, located on
Mt S. Caiogero near modern Sciacca)and then fought to the last near Himera (FGrH 568 f 2; Schol.
Pind. Of. n 95).

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7 - SICILY, 478-431 B.C.

Fig. 6. Bronze helmet of Etruscan type dedi-
cated by Hiero at Olympia. ‘Hiero, son of
Deinomenes, and the Syracusans [dedicate) to
Zeus, from the Tyrrhenian spoils at Cumae.’
(M— L 29; after W. Hege and G. Rodenwaldt,
Olympia (1956) 27, fig. 12.)

Hiero and his court poets made the most of the battle of Cumae. Part
of the spoils was promptly sent as offerings to Olympia and Delphi. At
Olympia three bronze helmets (M-L 29; SEG xxxm 328) have been
found bearing inscriptions in archaic Syracusan script: ‘Hiero, the son of
Deinomenes, and the Syracusans — to Zeus, from (the spoils of) the
Tyrrhenian at Cumae’ (Fig. 6). At Delphi a golden tripod and a Nike
were later dedicated by Hiero beside the tripod offered there by Gelon
after the battle of Himera (Ath. vi.23if; cf. Bacch. in. 17-19). The
panhellenic myth of Greeks fighting barbarians was revived. Simonides,
in a well-known, but possibly partly spurious, epigram (Page, Epigr. Gr.
Sim. xxxiv), represented the sons of Deinomenes as ‘conquerors of
barbarian nations who offered the Greeks a mighty allied hand for
freedom’. Pindar for once was less enthusiastic: his own prayer in 470
was that ‘the Phoenician and the Tyrrhenians’ war-cry keep quiet at
home: it has seen what woe to its ships came of its pride before Kyme’
( Pjth . 1.72 f). All this looks like a well-orchestrated plan on the part of
Hiero to emulate Gelon and even surpass him in feats of arms, display of
wealth, and panhellenic propaganda. This, of course, is not to say that
the battle of Cumae was an insignificant event. On the contrary, modern
scholars have rightly considered it the turning point in the Etruscan
decline; but this decline was not yet perceptible to Hiero’s generation.
And Hiero’s panhellenic propaganda, though formally justifiable by the
fact that Dorian Syracuse fought with Chalcidian Cumae against the
Etruscans, was obviously intended also to obscure the memory of less
pleasant facts, as Gelon’s refusal to give a ‘mighty allied hand’ to the
Greeks against the Persians ( CAH iv 2 772) and Hiero’s own policy of
dechalcidization and doricization in Sicily.

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1 5 3

Hiero’s control over the Tyrrhenian coast as far as Cumae remained
firmly in his hands until the end of his life. After Anaxilas’ death in about
476, the overlordship over Rhegium and Messana was entrusted to
Micythos, a former liegeman of Anaxilas, who ruled honestly as epitropos
of his master’s sons (Hdt. vii. 170.4; Just, iv 2.5; Diod. xi.48.2).
However, as soon as they came of age ( c . 469/8), Micythos was
honourably dismissed through the direct intervention of Hiero, and
after rendering an impeccable account of his administration, he retired to
spend the rest of his life at Tegea in Arcadia (Hdt. loc. cit.\ Paus. v.26.2— 5 ;
DGE 794).

Apart from these crises, the Concert of Greek Sicily was successfully
orchestrated by Hiero until his major partner Theron died in 472.
Hiero’s last years were certainly not his happiest. The fall of the tyrannies
at Acragas, Gela and Himera must have had repercussions within the
Syracusan epicracy, perhaps in the form of increased oppression; but
evidence is ambiguous and lacks a precise chronological setting. Epi-
charmus’ picture of night watchmen (peripoloi ) giving a good beating to a
suspected vagabond in the streets of Syracuse (fr. 3 5 Kaibel) is no more
than a picturesque scene from the night life of any ancient city. But
regular employment of spies and delators under Hiero seems well
attested. Aristotle may have preserved a Syracusan term, potagogides, for
women-spies(P); he also mentions the ‘eavesdroppers’ ( otakoustai ) des-
patched by Hiero to report the utterances and sentiments of people in
town (Pol. v. 1 3 1 3 b 1 1 ). Even such devices, however, are not peculiar to
tyrannies; democracies too had their sycophants, and Aristotle himself
was aware that Hiero’s model for his eavesdroppers might have been
borrowed from Persia. Yet at Syracuse they aroused dread and suspicion
even at the tyrant’s court.

Nevertheless, Hiero’s court was pre-eminently a salon of literary men.
It probably developed as such during the years of the tyrant’s illness.
Almost all his guests were great poets imported from Greece and Ionia:
Pindar, who settled in Sicily long enough to make friends and enemies at
court and to dedicate to Sicilian tyrants and magnates one-third of his
extant poems; Aeschylus, whose Persians was performed at Syracuse in
471 (another instance of panhellenic propaganda) ( Vit.Aescb . 18), and
came to Sicily for a last time after 45 8 to settle and die at Gela; Simonides
of Ceos, to whom are also ascribed odes in honour of Theron’s brother
Xenocrates and Anaxilas (or his son Leophron); Simonides’ nephew
Bacchylides and the Ionian Xenophanes of Colophon. Two of his guests
were certainly Sicilians: Epicharmus and Phormis.

A valetudinarian despot like his elder brother, Hiero suffered for years
from gall-stones. In about 474/3 his illness was alarming enough for
Pindar to send him a consolatory letter ( Pythian 111); and in 470 the poet
compared Hiero with Philoctetes, the wounded hero (Pjth. 1.50). At last,
in 467 the tyrant died; he was buried in Aitna and accorded heroic

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J. SICILY, 478— 43 1 B.C.

honours (Diod. xi.66.4; Str. vi.2.3, p. 268). To his son Deinomenes, by
then governor of Aitna, he left the task of dedicating at Olympia the
offerings he had vowed for his victories (Paus. vi.12.1, vm.42.8). With
Hiero’s death, the age of archaic tyranny in Sicily came to an end. After
him, le deluge. As was the case with many archaic tyrants, Hiero’s
appraisal by his contemporaries and later generations was ambivalent.
Inevitably, to his court poets he was a wise and just king, never jealous of
nobles, a generous host, the blessed leader of armies, the first in opulence
and glory, and even a man of letters. Later authors display mixed
feelings. The Timaean tradition as retained by Diodorus had much good
to say of Gelon, but not of Hiero, who is depicted as violent and
avaricious, unbeloved by his subjects and a stranger to sincerity and
nobility of character. A different appraisal was expressed by Xenophon,
who wrote a fictitious dialogue between Hiero and Simonides on the
happiness of tyrants and their subjects. Later, Plutarch ( Mor . 5 5 1 f)
favourably compared Hiero and Pisistratus, both of whom, he says,
maintained ‘good order’ {eunomia), promoted husbandry, and taught the
people sobriety and industry. The comparison of Hiero with Pisistratus
implies that in later centuries, at least some archaic tyrants could be
judged by their actions, without the modern need to classify them
sociologically as ‘restorers’ or ‘revolutionaries’. Hiero, like Gelon - but
unlike Pisistratus - was indeed a champion of the old good order, and the
Deinomenids were remembered as such when their rule was contrasted
with the years of democratic anarchy preceding and following them.
Theirs was a military monarchy, the rise and fall of which never entailed
an economic revolution of any sort; as a result, both agrarian and
commercial classes were left to thrive. It was truly a golden age for
Syracuse, and even allowing for the high price in human suffering, it was
a golden age for most of the Western Greeks as well.

II. THE FALL OF THE TYRANNIES

As we said earlier, the central event of Sicilian history during the period
in question is the fall of the three great dynasties within a decade (471-
462) and the consequent disintegration of their respecdve epicracies.
Acragas was the first to meet this fate for the simple reason that Theron
was the first of the great established tyrants to die without leaving a
worthy successor. In 472 his son Thrasydaeus ascended the throne.
Having demonstrated his unfitness as governor of Himera, in the first
and only year of his reign at Acragas he provoked a pointless war with
Syracuse by conscripting an alarming host of some 20,000 citizen levies
and mercenaries. He was easily defeated by Hiero on the river Acragas.
Subsequently expelled by the citizenry, he fled to Megara, in central

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Greece, where he was put to death in 471. Peace was soon restored
between free Acragas and Syracuse, a decisive step which saved the
infant republic. Tyranny thus helped to bury itself. Following an
exhaustive war against Thrasydaeus’ mercenaries, the citizenry finally
forced them to evacuate their quarters in town and to withdraw to
Minoa, some 32 km west of Acragas. A few years later the mercenaries
were also dislodged from Minoa by a joint Acragantine and Syracusan
attack. This spelled the end of the Emmenid dynasty and the beginning
of the end of all tyrannies in Sicily. 4

The fall of the Emmenids marked not only a radical constitutional
change in the city state of Acragas, but also the dissolution of the entire
Acragantine epicracy. This happened not because the new republic was
anti-imperialistic, but because it was paralysed by its domestic troubles
and unable to maintain control over its foreign dominions. The result
was that two important subject towns, Gela and Himera, were gradually
transformed into autonomous republican city states. Although Gela was
already free when the Syracusans petitioned its help in 466, its citizens
were still engaged in a protracted war against their mercenaries, who had
withdrawn to such strongholds as Omphace and Cacyrium in the
hellenized Sicel hinterland north west of Gela. Only after the liberation
of Syracuse could the latter aid Gela in this struggle, and only then were
the Geloans who had been deported to Syracuse by Gelon able to return
to their homeland. Himera, too, was free by 471. Later on, Pindar
joyfully invoked Saviour Tyche, ‘the daughter of Zeus the Liberator’ in
his ode in honour of Ergoteles, a Himeraean Olympic victor, apparently
performed in 466. 5 In 466 that city, like Gela, was able to aid the
Syracusan revolt. Some exiles returned to Himera, while the local
mercenaries left, eventually settling in the territory of Messana. 6 Recent
excavations provide evidence of a new urban plan at Himera, which
supplanted an earlier one. However, the chronology of the finds is too
vague to enable us to verify whether the new plan is to be referred to the
restructuring of the city state after liberation or to the Dorian resettle-
ment of 476 (see above, p. 151) 7 . While Gela retained long after

4 The liberation of Acragas was probably celebrated with offerings to Delphi (see the story in Ael.
X/fri n.33). Before the final attack on Minoa, an Acragantine expedition against Crastus (an
unidentified Sican town in the centre of Sicily, possibly halfway between Acragas and Himera
(modern Kassar?), and allegedly the birthplace of Epicharmus) provoked a war between Acragas
and her former subject-cities Gela and Himera (P. Oxj. iv 665 = FGrH 5 77 f 1), the context of which
is hopelessly obscure. 5 See Barrett 1973 (h 32),

6 This is one plausible interpretation of a confused passage of Justin (iv.3.1). On the settlement of
mercenaries in the Messenian territory see below.

7 The reckoning of the Himeraean era of ‘good regime’ in Diod. xi.49.4 is similarly ambiguous: if
the right reading is 58 years (as in all MSS), the era must open in 466 (to end with the Carthaginian
sack of 409); if corrected to 68 years, it opens in 476, the year of Theron’s resettlement, when Himera
became a Dorian-Chalcidian mixed city.

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M 6

7. SICILY, 478-431 B.C.

Fig. 7. Silver coins of (a, b ) Himera, didrachm and tetradrachm,
about 465 b.c.; and ( 7 ) Aitna, tetradrachm, about 475-470 b.c. (After
Kraay and Hirmer 1966(0 192) figs. 66-7, 53.)

liberation the coinage types established by the tyrants, Himera rejected
the Acragantine symbols and adopted new ones, especially a river-
goddess pouring libation over an altar. A coin of Himera with a biga and
the name of Pelops has been thought to celebrate Ergoteles’s Olympic
victories (Fig. -jb).

The liberation of Syracuse, like that of Acragas, had to await the death
of her established tyrant and the revolt which his harsh successor
provoked. When Hiero died in 467 his brother Thrasybulus seized
power; Polyzalos must have been dead at that time. But Gelon had a son,
next in line to the throne after Thrasybulus, who had to be awarded some
governorship or command. His disappointment gave rise to a dynastic
crisis. Wider discontent at Syracuse is ascribed to Thrasybulus’ violent
character and to his execution or exiling of many citizens in order to
confiscate their property. At last the Syracusans revolted, chose their

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THE FALL OF THE TYRANNIES

157

own leaders and seized the suburbs outside the walls of Achradina.
Military aid, infantry, cavalry and even ships promptly arrived from the
free cities of Acragas, Gela and Himera, as well as from pro-Punic
Selinus and the Sicels. Basing himself on the fortified island of Ortygia
and in the walled quarter of Achradina, Thrasybulus tried to resist with
an army of mercenaries and a force of colonists from Aitna, but after his
defeat on land and sea he was forced to leave with his garrison. He was
given permission to retire to the friendly town of Epizephyrian Locri in
southern Italy, there to spend the rest of his life as a private citizen (Diod.
xi. 67-8).

The end of tyranny at Syracuse precipitated the immediate dissolution
of the Deinomenid epicracy in eastern Sicily. Again, as in the case of
Acragas, it was not out of the love of liberty for all that the nascent
republic of Syracuse assisted in the break-up of its own dominions, but
out of the imperative need for loyal allies in the fierce fight for its own
liberty. A general autonomistic movement spread from city to city,
calling for liberty (rather than ‘democracy’), repatriation of the deported
or exiled ‘Old Citizens’, enlistment of ‘New Citizens’ to swell the popular
ranks, and redistribution of land. This programme appears to be a
restoration of the status quo ante rather than an innovative plan. At first,
armed violence raged everywhere; the garrisons and governors found
themselves besieged in their own quarters and acropolis by the rebellious
citizenries. Later, a ‘Common Resolution’ {koinon dogma) was endorsed
by most cities, according to which the ‘Old Citizens’ were entitled to
return and partial rights were conferred upon veterans and immigrants
who had been naturalized in their respective cities by the tyrants. The
garrisons on active service were required to leave the cities and settle in
the territory of Messana, the only city in Sicily still governed by tyrants
(Diod. xi. 72-3, 76).

Five autonomous, republican city states grew up within a few years on
the ruins of the Syracusan epicracy: Syracuse itself, Catana, Naxus,
Leontini and Camarina. All started new issues of coins, usually rejecting
types associated with tyranny (with the exception of the Syracusan
quadriga, which gradually lost its former political meaning) and adopt-
ing new types with gods or local river-deities. The republic of Syracuse
was left with her own city territory on the south eastern corner of the
island and with her colonial outposts at Acrae and Casmenae. The
Dorian colony of Aitna was attacked by a host of armed Sicels under the
leadership of Ducetius — the first appearance of this remarkable person-
age, whose career we shall treat at length in the next section - in
cooperation with a republican army from Syracuse. The Aitnaeans were
ejected, and the original Catanaeans came back from Leontini, where
they had been confined since 476. Aitna again became Catana, a

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ij«

7. SICILY, 478-43 I B.C.

Fig. 8. Silver litra of Camarina, after 460 B.c.
( British Museum Catalogue oj Creek Coins Sicily 33.)

Chalcidian city; the territory was delimited anew, with the Sicels
recovering their confiscated lands while the returning Catanaeans
redistributed their own portion among themselves. Clearly, free Syra-
cuse preferred an anti-Deinomenid Chalcidian— Sicel population on the
banks of the Simeto to a Dorian base of potential followers of a new
tyrant. The ejected Aitnaeans removed to Inessa, a Sicel township on the
slopes of Etna west of Catana (it is variously located in the area of Civiti
or Paterno), taking with them the bones of Founder Hiero from his
desecrated tomb. At Inessa a new Aitna grew up near the Sicel township,
and some form of coexistence had to be worked out by both communi-
ties, possibly more along the lines of the peaceful Chalcidian model than
on the coercive Syracusan one. A coin of Aitna with the head of Selinus
replacing the Syracusan quadriga on the obverse has been hesitantly
attributed to the new Dorian settlement at Inessa.

Naxus too must have been restored by its original population
returning from Leontini. At any rate, Thucydides mentions that the
town existed in 42 5 . A new urban plan, consisting of straight streets and
long rectangular blocks with boundary stones at the crossroads, can
plausibly be attributed to the resettlement at this time, since nothing
about a Deinomenid foundation at Naxus is known from extant sources.
Leontini, relieved at last of its surplus population of deportees, now
looked forward to a new era' of prosperity. On the southern coast,
Camarina was soon restored. After standing deserted since Gelon
deported the population to Syracuse in about 485, the deportees and
their descendants came back to their former houses and lands. A number
of additional colonists joined the resettlement, and two new quarters,
unearthed by recent excavations, had to be erected to the east and west of
the original town to house the enlarged population. In 456 (or 452) this
‘newly peopled seat’ had already become a town that ‘nourishes the
people’ (Pindar’s words), boasting of an Olympic victor of its own, the
first since 528 b.c. 8 After a period of twenty-five years without any

8 Praxiteles of Mantinea, who calls himself ‘Syracusan and Camarinean’ on an inscription from
Olympia (Hill, Sources 2 B ioo), vaguely datable in the second quarter of the fifth century, was
possibly an Arcadian who settled first at Syracuse under the Deinomenids and then joined the
colony of Camarina. For a different, and widely accepted, view of this inscription, see Jeffery 1961 (c
I37) 1 60- 1 , 2 11 .

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THE FALL OF THE TYRANNIES I 5 9

coinage, Camarina now started minting silver litrae, showing on the
reverse Athena, the chief goddess of the city (a temple of Athena is
among the excavated remains) (Fig. 8).

Besides these eight cities, all autonomous since 466—461, four others
should be mentioned. Two of them were never restored (Megara
Hyblaea and Euboea), while the history of the other two, Messana and
Selinus, developed almost independently. Messana remained united
with Rhegium until the sons of Anaxilas were expelled in 461 under
unknown circumstances. This was the last Sicilian dynasty to leave the
stage after thirty-three years of rule. There are signs of Chalcidian revival
at Messana after 461. The old city name Zankle reappeared temporarily
on a famous tetradrachm (Fig. yb ), 9 and members of the old ‘Zanclaean’
population prospered again in the next decades, as shown in the case of
two Olympic victors, Leontiscus and Symmachus, who were apparently
of that stock. However, all this does not amount to a ‘rechalcidization’ as
in the case of Catana. On the contrary, Messana remained predominantly
Dorian, and may even have absorbed a mass of discharged mercenaries,
including many Dorians from the Peloponnese, according to the
‘Common Resolution’ (see above, p. 157). Even Anaxilas’ hares, the
coinage symbol rejected by Rhegium in favour of its mythical founder
Acastus, were retained by Messana throughout the fifth century.

Selinus, as we have said, was a world apart. Lying within the Punic
sphere of influence, the vicissitudes of its history in the fifth century
appear to be almost totally unrelated to the main trends of Greek Sicilian
history. In 466 Selinus sent aid to the rebellious Syracusans, a step
certainly not unwelcome to Carthage, and soon started minting a new
series of tetradrachms portraying the local river-god and the Syracusan
quadriga. Relations with post-Emmenid Acragas eventually improved,
especially after the mercenary base at Minoa was broken up. The story of
how Empedocles of Acragas drained the malarial marshes around
Selinus and was subsequently worshipped there as a god may serve as an
instance of the friendly relations between these cities. Sporadic border
wars coupled with intermarriage rights ( epigamia ) typify the kind of
relationship prevailing in the fifth century between Selinus and the
Elymian hellenized city of Segesta. 10 Generally speaking, Selinus pros-

9 Two symbols on this coin have been unconvincingly interpreted on the lines of the symbolic
crosses on the Union Jack: a ‘Chalcidian’ Poseidon holding a ‘Messenian’ thunderbolt, or,
alternatively, a ‘Messenian’ Zeus wearing a ‘Chalcidian’ chlamys. See Lacroix 1965 (c 195)24—5 with
nn.

10 A war between Segesta and Lilybaeum, dated in 454/5 by Diodorus (xi.86.2), has been
transformed by some scholars into a war between Segesta and Selinus, on the ground that
Lilybaeum did not exist before 396 (see Diod. xxii.10.4). The Temple G inscription from Selinus
(IG xiv 268 = M-L 58) has been referred to this hypothetical war, although on palaeographical
grounds it is datable at any time between c. 460 and 409. On the epigamia of Selinus and Segesta see
Thuc. vi. 6.2.

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7- SICILY, 478-4JI B.C.

Fig. 9. Silver tctradrachms of ( a ) Messana, about 460 b . g .; (/>) Zancle,
about 460 b.c.; (r) Selinus, about 450 b.c. (After Kraay and Hirmcr
1966(0 192) figs. 52, 53, 186.)

pered during this century and even expanded beyond the city walls over
the northern Manuzza area, where aerial photography has revealed
streets laid out on a grid-plan, though slightly differing in orientation
from the famous sixth-century axial plan of the walled area (see CAH
hi 2 . 3, 168 Fig. 28). Selinus was a mixed city. A well-known fifth-century
inscription (M-L 38) recording a great victory over an unnamed enemy
gives us some idea of the local pantheon, with its Megarian and Laconian
deities as well as a Heracles who might well be a Phoenician-hellenized
Melqarth. Perhaps owing to such non-Greek contacts, the art of Selinus
was more inventive than elsewhere in Sicily. Its achievements in the fifth
century are best illustrated by the famous metopes of Temple B, which is
in itself a masterpiece of the new classical Dorian architecture.

By the close of this revolutionary decade, the coasts of Greek Sicily

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THE SICEL MOVEMENT

1 6 1

were again dotted with autonomous city states, as in the late colonial
period prior to the rise of the tyrannies. Most cities had now regular
urban plans, either new or renewed, new residential quarters beyond the
walls, and magnificent temples. Despite all the turmoil, the decade was
also a period of growth and expansion of the new republics, and a
significant chapter in ancient urban history.

III. THE SICEL MOVEMENT

The autonomistic movement could not be confined to the urbanized
Greek coast. During the years when the Greek towns were practically
paralysed by intestine strife and political change, the notion of autonomy
spread endemically into the rural Sicel interior where the indigenous
population felt secure enough to establish an independent entity of its
own and even to expand at the expense of the hellenized belt stretching
around the heart of the island. In other words, the Sicel movement took
advantage of the void created by the crumbling epicracies, and in the first
stage also exploited the Greek cities’ need for allies in their own struggle
against tyrants and mercenaries. At Syracuse, the moderate faction of the
so-called chariestatoi (fair-minded) citizens apparently fancied for a time
that Ducetius, the Sicel leader, might be manipulated, but, as soon as
these hopes were banished and a more radical form of democracy
prevailed, a joint effort with Acragas was made to stamp out the Sicel
political entity. The Sicel interlude, though doomed to failure, lasted
about two decades ( c . 461-440).

Ducetius’ immediate goal in 461 was probably nothing more than the
recovery of confiscated land in the vicinity of Catana. But the result was
that a centre of Sicel autonomy arose in the redeemed land in the western
part of the plain, between the slopes of Etna and the hills of Caltagirone.
It was the traditional area of Sicel and Chalcidian cooexistence, strongly
hellenized from Catana and Leontini at first, and later on from Gela and
Syracuse as well. A couple of years later (459/8) two memorable events
show the first signs of consolidation and expansion: the foundation of
Menainon and the conquest of Morgantina. A hilly village named
Menae, the birthplace of Ducetius (commonly located at modern Mineo,
east of Caltagirone), was first enlarged and then removed to the plain 11 -
a typical act of synoecism in a mountainous area, giving birth to a polis of
Greek type, with Ducetius (the only occasion on which he is called
basileus ) as its Founder. Then followed the conquest of Morgantina, an
important Sicel township almost unanimously located on the Serra

11 Diodorus may have referred twice to the same event, first as the foundation of Menainon (in
459/8; xi. 78. 5), and secondly as the transplantation of Mcnai (vea? MSS, in 45 5/2; xi.88.6).

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7. SICILY, 478-431 B.C.

162

Orlando ridge (near Aidone). 12 Recent excavations have revealed the
extent of hellenization in this site. Since about 560 it was a mixed town,
with an acropolis (the hill of Cittadella), city walls and regular buildings,
but no archaic temples of Greek type. Some Chalcidians and Dorians
lived apparently in the town, but the population was predominantly
Sicel, to judge from the evidence of burial architecture and funerary
rites. Like a few other Sicel townships, Morgantina had apparently been
reluctant to join the autonomous Sicel entity, and had to be annexed by
force.

The events of 45 9/8 can plausibly be viewed as the second phase in the
growth of the Sicel movement as well as of Ducetius’ personal leader-
ship. A third phase was inaugurated by Ducetius’ foundation in 45 3/2 of
a sacral and administrative capital at Palice, an ancient Sicel site usually
located at Lake Naftia (not far from Mineo). It is a volcanic site where in
antiquity two jets of acid water shot high into the air from two craters in
the lake. A temenos of two Sicel deities, called the Brothers Palikoi -
probably personifications of the jets themselves 13 — had been built and
used from time immemorial for worship, for taking solemn oaths, and as
an oracle. More recent, and possibly of Greek origin, was its use as an
asylum for runaway slaves. Near this temenos, Ducetius founded the Sicel
capital. A town of Greek type, Palice was enclosed with strong walls and
its surrounding territory portioned out among the settlers. Some traces
of it may have been identified in aerial photographs of the so-called hill of
Rocchicella (to the east of the lake), and parts of what might be the city
walls have been excavated. They are poor remnants, indeed, of such a
‘remarkable city’, as Diodorus calls it. Though only for a short time ( c .
452—440), Palice became the political and sacral centre of a Sicel
‘League’, synteleia or koinon, as Diodorus calls it. Of course, these two
hellenistic federal terms could hardly have been current among the fifth-
century Sicels, who in any case would have preferred a Sicel word. The
hellenistic terms imply the existence of a compulsory state organization,
mainly for military and fiscal purposes. A common Sicel army is in fact
mentioned by Diodorus in connexion with the synteleia, and a number of
so-called ‘barbarized’ coins, minted on Greek models around the middle
of the century, belong to a number of sites, all within the autonomous
Sicel area. The official raison d’etre of Ducetius’ synteleia was the notion of
a ‘common peoplehood’. We are told, in fact, that most townships
‘which were of the same people [homoethneis]’ , with the exception of one

12 An alternative location in the area of Caltagirone has been suggested on the ground that
Morgantina appears in the treaty of Gela (424) as a dependency in an area disputed by Syracuse and
Camarina (Thuc. iv.65.1).

13 Innumerable etymologies have been suggested for Palikoi , from the Greek one (n aXiv
tK€odai = ‘those who come back’) already known to Aeschylus (fr. 6 Radt), to the more serious,
Italic, ones proposed by modern scholars (see e.g. Bello i960 (h 49), Croon 1952 (h 55)).

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Hybla in the region of Catana, were gathered by Ducetius into his
synteleia. ‘Common peoplehood’ is not to be understood in racial terms;
most townships were mixed anyway, and even the Sicel-Dorian double
city of Inessa— Aitna was forced to join, after the local governor (Hiero’s
son Deinomenes?) was slain in 45 1 b.c.

In that same year the Sicel League was at its zenith; a year later it went
to pieces. An uncontrolled, expanding Sicel statehood could not be
tolerated by either Syracuse or Acragas, both of which had watched
passively for a decade, and at times utilized, the growing movement.
During the same decade, the moderate faction at Syracuse had been
gradually yielding to more radical, democratic, and imperialistic, ele-
ments - a significant change which should not be viewed as a reaction to
the rise of Ducetius, who never posed a threat to Syracuse in any way
comparable to that posed by Carthage at the beginning and the end of the
century. Rather, this radicalization was a result of inner social and
constitutional developments. When in 451/0 Ducetius laid siege to
Motyon, probably a hellenized Sican stronghold then held by an
Acragantine garrison, 14 the Syracusans joined the Acragantines in
despatching aid to the besieged. In the ensuing battle Ducetius won the
day, 15 and the Syracusan general, a certain Bolkon, blamed for the defeat
and charged with having had secret dealings with Ducetius, was
promptly tried and executed. But the following summer, a strong
Syracusan army attacked Ducetius at Nomae 16 and in the fierce battle
that ensued the Sicels were in turn routed. Most of the survivors
scattered, seeking refuge in the surrounding Sicel strongholds, and
leaving Ducetius with only a handful of followers. The Acragantines
meanwhile reconquered Motyon. 17 This was the end; Ducetius begged
for refuge at Syracuse where he was tried before a General Assembly,
which, persuaded by the moderate ‘fair-minded’ elders, spared the

14 It has been tentatively located at Vassallaggi, west of Caltanissetta, where an excavated site has
an urban plan of Greek type, walls, an archaic shrine, terraced houses and a rich necropolis showing
Rhodian-Cretan influence probably transmitted through Gela or Acragas.

15 A bronze shield from Olympia inscribed in Ionic letters ( S EG xv 2 5 2) has been restored to give
the meaning that it was dedicated from ‘the spoils of Acragantines and Syracusans’ (ZvpaKo o[tcov
Kdt] ’ AKpayavTtvwv \d<f>vpa) by an unnamed victorious enemy of both who in the mid-fifth century
could hardly be anyone else but Ducetius. However, the text could also be read as a dedication by the
Syracusans from Acragantine spoils (ZvpaKoo[ioi awo] * AKpayavrlvtuv Xd 4 >vpa) and referred in that
case to the war of 446 b.c. (see below).

16 Nomae has been tentatively located on the slopes of Monte Navone (between Piazza Armerina
and Barrafranca), mainly because the site is surrounded by several hilltops suitable for Sicel
strongholds. One of the summits, Montagna di Marzo, has traces of a regular plan of Greek type
identifiable by air photography, and graffiti (in both Sicel and Greek letters) on vases of Attic type;
see Mussinano *966 and 1970 (h 61—62).

17 Pausanias (v2$. 5) mentions a statuary group dedicated by the Acragantines after a war against
Motya , and conjectures that the artist was Calamis (active in the first part of the fifth century). The
suggestion that Motyon, not Motya, should be understood, seems acceptable, though it does not
solve other difficulties aroused by the passage.

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7. SICILY, 478-431 B.C.

suppliant, and voted by acclamation to exile him with a pension to
Corinth, the mother-city of Syracuse, on condition that he never return
to Sicily.

Without its leader, the Sicel movement was apparently immobilized
for some years. But Ducetius’ story was not yet at an end. Contrary to all
agreements, but undoubtedly with full Syracusan connivance and secret
cooperation, Ducetius came back to Sicily in 446 on the plea that he had
been instructed by an oracle to found a city at Kale Akte, the ‘Fair Shore’
on the northern coast where half a century earlier the scheme of a pan-
Ionian colony under Zanclaean auspices failed to materialize (see CAH
iv 2 762—3). A contingent of Greek colonists from mainland Greece,
joined by Sicel settlers led by a certain Archonides, ruler of Herbita (a
hellenized Sicel township, probably to be located in the area of Kale
Akte 18 ), participated in the enterprise. Some traces of the original urban
plan of the colony have been identified in aerial photographs of land near
modern Caronia (between Capo d’Orlando and Cefalu). Founder for the
third time of a hellenized Sicel polis, Ducetius became once more a useful
and tractable agent of Syracuse. The whole Kale Akte affair, in fact, looks
like a Syracusan plan to plant a staunchly loyal Sicel-Greek base on the
Tyrrhenian coast, too vital an area to be left to others, whether the cities
of the Strait of Acragas. Understandably enough, the plan created a
furore at Acragas, which had, since the sixth century b.c., regarded the
coast of Himera as its own sphere of influence. After charging Syracuse
with blatantly permitting Ducetius to return, Acragas declared war,
provoking a dangerous confrontation between two blocs of cities. As it
turned out, the sole outcome was a single battle on the southern Himeras
(Salso) river, won by Syracuse. Greatly encouraged, Ducetius was
allowed to pursue his colonial enterprise undisturbed and even to make a
last attempt at reviving the movement. But soon afterward (440) he died
of an illness. The Syracusans then decided to revert to their old policy of
subjugating the hellenized Sicel territory in eastern Sicily. One pocket of
heroic resistance at Trinacie (presumably another name for Palice 19 ) was
cleared out by a Syracusan army. The Sicel capital was destroyed, the
inhabitants sold into slavery, and the choicest spoils offered at Delphi,

,8 Herbita has been variously located on the north coast (at S. Stefano di Camastra) or inland (at
Nicosia or near Gangi, in the mountainous area south west of Cefalu). A later namesake of this
Archonides founded Halaesa Archonidon in 403 (Diod. xiv.16. 1—4), located at Castel di Tusa (on
the coast, to the west of Cefalu).

19 Trinacie, a Greek symbolic name possibly alluding to the synoecism of all Sicily as the final
goal of the movement, is said by Diodorus (xu.29.2) to have occupied the ‘first place’ among Sicel
cities, an expression well suited for Palice. In the ancient summary of Diodorus’ Book xu, iiri
FIiktjvovs (scil. FI < aX > iktjvovs) refers to the Syracusan attack on Trinacie. Others read
! 7 t<a> Krjvous or fli < a > klvovs, the inhabitants of Piacus, a Sicel site known from its late fifth-
century bronze coinage and tentatively located at Mendolito, near Adrano, on the south-western
slopes of Etna.

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SYRACUSE AND ACRAGAS I 6 5

but no self-evident mark of the struggle and victory was left on Sicilian
coinages. These were stirring days for Syracuse. Its old epicracy was
coming to life again on an oblong tract of Sicel land, protruding to the
north west of her own territory, from the hills of Caltagirone to the
slopes of Etna. Most Sicel townships in this area became tributary, some
of them garrisoned and others formally declared ‘allies’. Only at the very
heart of the island, and on the northern coast, did an autonomous Sicel
reserve survive. The Chalcidian cities on the east coast, which had
become free thanks to the nascent republic of Syracuse a quarter of a
century earlier, suddenly found themselves surrounded by a new
Syracusan epicracy and reduced to the precarious status of an ethnic
enclave.

Ducetius’ movement, judged by its ultimate results, was an utter
failure. Though born out of the ashes of the old Deinomenid empire, it
became instrumental in the birth of yet another epicracy. Its transient
successes were totally dependent on the silent or conniving support of
Syracuse, and only as its puppet did Ducetius have a chance of achieving
any degree of autonomy for his own people. By and large, Ducetius
understood the rules of the game and worked within the given
framework of the existing political powers; but he made his own
blunders and his movement had no deep roots and feelings. Further-
more, archaeology, numismatics and aerial photography have amply
documented the high degree of hellenization and urbanization of the
area affected by the Sicel movement. In fact, we may confidently state
that without the full assimilation of the Greek notions of statehood and
urban life, the Sicel movement would never have seen the light.
Ducetius’ models were Gelon and Hiero, not Kokalos or Hyblon of old.
Both attraction and resistance to Hellenic culture, assimilation and
artificial revival of national traditions, interacted within the movement,
among elites and masses alike. Thus, ironically, the Sicel movement’s
most enduring result was the furtherance of Sicel assimilation into the
cultural Siciliote koine of the late fifth century b.c. All non-Greek Sicilian
vernaculars had disappeared as written languages by the end of the
century.

IV. DEMOCRACY AND CULTURE AT SYRACUSE AND ACRAGAS

The three decades following the fall of the tyrannies were crucial to
Syracuse’s constitutional and socio-economic development and its rise
to the rank of a major hegemonic power in the West. After Thrasybulus
and his garrison left Syracuse in 466, there was protracted strife between
two classes of citizens, whom Diodorus (presumably following Timaeus)
termed the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’. The ‘Old’ were the victims of tyranny,

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7 . SICILY, 478-43 I B.C.

166

excluded and dispossessed, mostly living in the suburbs outside the walls
of Achradina, and some returning exiles. The ‘New’ were the elite which
had been created under tyranny - veteran soldiers, 7,000 of them still left
in town, immigrants from the Peloponnese, wealthy people who had
been deported to Syracuse from towns razed to the ground (such as
Megara Hyblaea and Euboea) and could not be repatriated. The ‘New’
had been installed by the tyrants in the walled quarters of Ortygia and
Achradina and presumably assigned land in the countryside. The
restoration of the ancien regime as conceived by the ‘Old’ citizens implied a
thorough reversal of the situation, including the exchange of quarters,
properties and political rights, a programme evidently unacceptable to
the ‘New’. Entrenched in their respective quarters, ‘Old’ and ‘New’
citizens started a war of nerves and attrition that went on for years. In 463
an assembly of the ‘Old’ deliberated on the establishment of ‘democracy’
and a cult of Zeus the Liberator, with an annual festival of Liberty. They
also voted to reserve all magistracies for themselves to the exclusion of
the ‘New’ citizens. A true civil war ensued, with blockades and attacks
on land and sea. It was finally won by the ‘Old’ in 461, thanks mainly to
an elite corps of 600 epilektoi. 20 At this stage some compromise must have
been made, the ‘Old’ probably agreeing that the restoration of property
be made by legal means and that the ‘New’ be assigned other land and
houses in compensation. In fact, Syracusan courts became so busy with
claims to confiscated property that the belief that Greek forensic oratory
was actually born of such trials was seriously credited in antiquity.

It was out of these changes that the new institutions of republican
Syracuse — the General Assembly, the Council, the board of strategoi —
took shape. Typical elements of radical democracy, such as sortition and
payment for office, were never introduced at Syracuse, but a variant of
Athenian ostracism, called petalismos, came into use for a short while,
allegedly after a certain Tyndarides made an abortive attempt at tyranny
in 454. Imperial ambitions were aroused along with the rise of democ-
racy, as usually occurred in ancient maritime city states. In 433 two
admirals, first Phayllus then Apelles, were sent with a fleet to the
Tyrrhenian Sea to ravage the Etruscan coast and the islands of Elba and
Corsica, 21 a reminder to all concerned that the new democracy was not
loath to adopt Hiero’s Tyrrhenian policy. Then, in 440, Ducetius’ death

20 Theories that this elite corps became later an oligarchic ‘council’ or vigilante cabal (see
especially Diod. xi.86.5 on Tyndarides, 454 b.c.); a picked body of six hundred in summer 414
(Thuc. vi. 96. 3, 97.3); cpiUktoi under Hermocrates in 413 (Diod. xm. 1 1.4); oligarchic synedrion of Six
Hundred in 317 (Diod. xix.4.3, etc) are largely unwarranted. For a battle between Syracusans and
mercenaries in the (otherwise unknown) ‘plain of Giaukoi’ (?) see P. Oxy. iv 665 ( FCrH 557 P 1).

21 Whether Phayllus’ name should be read on an inscription from Selinus ( SEG xii 41 1) and
identified with the Syracusan admiral is still a matter of dispute; see now Giuffrida Icntile 1983 (h 75)
68—9 with n. 33.

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SYRACUSE AND ACRAGAS 167

gave Syracuse a golden opportunity to re-establish its epicracy on land.
The next year the Syracusans were capable of building one hundred
triremes, besides doubling their cavalry and increasing their infantry.
Democratic Syracuse was rapidly becoming a major power in the West,
as it had been under its great tyrants, an achievement that, at this point,
did not even cost it very much, for Syracuse was now simply taking
advantage of Etruscan decline, Sicel disorientation, and Carthaginian
self-imposed isolation.

Under democracy, Syracuse was on the verge of becoming the
greatest city state in the Greek world and a centre of Hellenic culture.
With some 20,000 citizens and a total population of a quarter of a million,
Syracuse was a ‘megalopolis’ (Pindar’s term) by fifth-century Greek
standards, ‘in no way smaller than Athens’ (as Thucydides put it),
including a prosperous community of Phoenician merchants with
vessels in port and houses in town, and a growing number of Etruscan
and Sicel slaves. The four quarters of Syracuse — Ortygia on the island
with its archaic temples, Achradina on the mainland opposite with its
large and regular streets, Temenites outside the walls with its old theatre,
probably built up under Hiero, and a fourth suburb, later named Tyche-
were densely populated (see below, Fig. 40). The famous quarries north
of the unwalled suburbs, on the still empty plateau of Epipolae, were in
full use both for building stone and as prisons.

Summing up the general situation at Syracuse at mid-century,
Diodorus writes that ‘a multitude of demagogues and sycophants was
arising, the youth were cultivating cleverness in oratory, and, in a word,
many were exchanging the ancient and sober way of life for ignoble
pursuits; wealth was increasing because of the peace, but there was little
if any concern for concord and honest conduct’. 22 In this moralistic vein
later Greek historians perceived the changes from Deinomenid culture,
with its ostentatious architecture, court poetry and the politically
innocuous comedies of Epicharmus, to a democratic, written and more
sophisticated culture. With the remarkable exception of the choral lyric,
an import from mainland and Aegean Greece, and comic theatre,
literature and science made their first appearance in Syracuse after the fall
of its tyranny. The mime of Sophron gradually evolved from Epichar-
mus’ comedy as a genuine creation of Doric Sicily. The art of persuasion
and the theoretical study of rhetoric, traditionally ‘first invented’ by
Corax and Tisias of Syracuse, attained a high level of excellence thanks to
the genius of Gorgias, a recognized master of his art before he visited
Athens in 427 b.c. Finally, in the field of historiography, Sicily did not
lag far behind Ionia. Antiochus of Syracuse, a younger contemporary of
Herodotus active in the third quarter of the fifth century, was the author

22 xi. 87. 5 (tr. Oldfather).

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7 . SICILY, 478-43 I B.C.

Fig. 10. Silver decadrachms of Syracuse, about 465 b.c. (After Kraay and Hirmer 1966 (c
192) figs. 78-9.)

of the first continuous History of Sicily, beginning with the mythical king
Kokalos and ending with the year of the Congress of Gela (424/3 b.c.),
and of ,a great treatise On Italy. Writing in Ionic, the dialect of
historiography at that time, his wide interest lay in the history of the
Greek as well as the non-Greek West. Yet this new written culture did
not oust fine arts. It was the Syracusan engravers working at the mint
under democracy who achieved an unsurpassed mastery of sculptural
design. The best known example is the first issue of a bullion silver
decadrachm (Fig. 10), once wrongly identified with the gold ‘Damare-
teion’ struck, according to Diodorus, immediately after the battle of
Himera (see CAH iv 2 775 ), but now connected by most numismatists
with the final liberation of Syracuse in 461 b.c.

Acragas, the second greatest city in Sicily, continued to be the major
rival of Syracuse. Its new regime after 472/1 was at first an oligarchy of
wealthy citizens. An Assembly of the ‘Thousand’ was established and
then abolished by Empedocles (by what authority we do not know) just
three years after it had been set up. A less narrow oligarchy developed.
Anecdotes about Empedocles, deriving in part from Timaeus, imply the
functioning at his time of a Council and magistrates, the existence of
factions, the plundering of public funds alongside the use of judicial
means to prevent illegalities of any kind. But Acragas never became a
‘democracy’ of the Syracusan, let alone the Athenian, type. However, for
two generations, until sacked by the Carthaginians in 406 b.c., Acragas
was an affluent plutocratic republic . 23 A recent calculation (De Waele
*979 ( H 5)) puts t ^ ie population of Acragas in the fifth century at about
20,000 within the walls and 100-r 50,000 outside, including Sicans and
slaves. ‘A most beautiful city’, as Pindar called it, with its parallel streets
23 See CAH iii 2 . 3 , 1 66, Fig. 27; CAH iv 2 777, Fig. 84,

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SYRACUSE AND ACRAGAS I 69

Fig. it. Silver tetradrachm of Acragas, about 460-420 b.c. (After Kraay
and Hirmer 1966 (c 192) fig. 170.)

running the length from the slopes of Rupe Atenea and the acropolis
down to the hill of the temples, Acragas was engaged for decades in
erecting its colossal Olympieum, which was never finished. 24 Two new
Doric temples, conventionally called the temples of Concord and Hera,
rose on the southern slope, beside the four already standing on the
eastern crag. No less famous than the temples were the monumental
tombs (including some for horses which had won at Olympia), the
artificial lake, and the luxurious houses and villas. Fine specimens of
Western Greek art, such as the well-known ephebos and the recently
restored warrior, fictile busts and lion-head spouts decorated public
buildings and streets. The coinage of fifth-century Acragas is remarkable
for its beauty and size, especially the famous tetradrachms with the
original types of eagle and crab (Fig. 1 1). The economy flourished, in
part owing to export of wine and olives, mainly to Carthage. But values
had also changed since the beginning of the century, as Pindar noted
when comparing the good old days with the more vulgar money-minded
present. Tales of Acragantine luxury and effeminacy, of neglect of
military duties, as well as descriptions of public festivals and great
marriages abound and testify to the image of fifth-century Acragas in
later minds.

Letters and sciences flourished as well. Whether Carcinus, the tragic
poet often mocked by Aristophanes, was an Acragantine by origin is still
a matter of dispute; he flourished at Athens, and his son Xenocles
attained the level required to win against Euripides at Athens in 41 5 with
a tetralogy. Deinolochos, a comic writer, may have been an Acragantine.
Music was the art of Midas, and later of Metelos, who became Plato’s
teacher. A local school of medicine is represented by Acron, a physician
and the son of a physician, and, of course, by Empedocles, by far the
greatest representative of almost every branch of learning in post-
Emmenid Acragas. Philosopher, poet, mystagogue and healer, Empe-

24 See Pis. to Vol. iv, pi. 266 and pp. 1 89-90 here.

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7. SICILY, 478—4 3 1 B.C.

170

docks derived the fullest benefit from such visiting men of letters as
Pindar and Simonides, as well as from the new open atmosphere which
prevailed in the city and all over Sicily. He is in fact associated with both
western and eastern philosophers — Pythagoras, Parmenides, Xeno-
phanes, Anaxagoras — and their schools, thereby bringing to his native
city some of the most vigorous intellectual influences of the time. A good
citizen involved in local politics and remembered as a ‘democrat’, he
wrote a long poem on the invasion of Xerxes, and Aristotle considered
him the inventor of rhetoric. He in fact delivered, and possibly also
wrote, many discourses on the most pressing problems of his day. A
great intellect, and a peculiar mixture of mysticism and science, Empedo-
cles was both venerated and dreaded by his countrymen; significantly, he
was finally exiled from his motherland . 25

Lesser cities, too, flourished economically and culturally. Besides their
silver coinages, which have often been mentioned above, most cities
now also issued bronze pieces to replace silver litrae for minor denomina-
tions; this is in itself a sign of expanding local circulation. Himera
boasted a Pythagorean of her own, a certain Petron, said to be of Dorian
origin, but bearing a name that may point to the Sican (or Elymian)
township of Petra in western Sicily. The school of Pythagoras of
Rhegium influenced much Sicilian sculpture, and the Himeraean painter
Demophilus became a teacher of Zeuxis of Heraclea. Leontini produced
Gorgias and his brother Herodicus, a physician of renown. Another
physician, and a disciple of Empedocles, named Pausanias, was a Geloan.
Olympic laurels, which had been the monopoly of the tyrants and their
capitals, were now won by the lesser free cities of Himera (five), Messana
(two) and Camarina (two) — an accurate indicator of both change and
continuity, considered in terms of wealth, life-style, and cultural values.

25 Fora revised view of constitutional developments at Acragas, and of Empedocles’ role, see my
article in Athenaeum 78 (1990) 483-501.

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CHAPTER 8 a

ART: ARCHAIC TO CLASSICAL

J. J. POLLITT

I. STYLE AND ICONOLOGY

Archaic Greek art, with roots stretching back to the Geometric style of
the eighth century b.c., had been concerned with forms whose effective-
ness was judged not so much by the degree to which they simulated one’s
optical experience of the surrounding world as by the degree to which
their internal properties of harmony and clarity expressed an essential
idea. Archaic artists did not so much imitate nature as create analogues
for it. They did this by dissecting the components of natural phenomena
into their fundamental geometric forms and then recomposing these
forms according to principles of symmetria, the commensurability of
parts. Works of representational art resulting from this process may not
have looked exactly like their counterparts in nature, but they were not
intended to. What was expressed by such familiar products of the
Archaic style as the kouroi , for example, was more in the nature of an eidos,
simultaneously a ‘form’ and an ‘idea’, than an imitation. Until well on
into the Hellenistic period an interest in defining underlying structures
through works of art, structures which evoked immutable ideas, conti-
nued to be of great importance in Greek art, but from the fifth century
b.c. onward this interest was increasingly combined with a desire to
record a wider range of natural appearances. To a great extent it is the
interplay between traditional idealism and a new empiricism that gives
the art of the Classical period its distinctive character.

Naturalism, the desire to represent both one’s actual sensuous
experience of nature and also the social and physical setting of one’s
everyday life, first played an important role in the Greek artistic tradition
during the innovative era between about 5 20 and 480 b . c . The supplan-
tation at this time of the self-contained perfection of mature Archaic
Greek art by an experimental naturalistic style is most strikingly
illustrated in Athenian red-figure vase painting. The simple shift about
525 b . c . from painting figures in black to reserving them on a reddish

Some account of the art of the Classical period will be found in the forthcoming Pis. to Vols. V and
VI. In the following notes reference is made to easily accessible illustrations in standard works and a
few monographs. See also Bibliography, Section i.

171

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172 8<z. art: archaic to classical

ground with only anatomical details painted in black stimulated, or
perhaps was stimulated by, a new interest in the expressive qualities of
single figures as opposed to those of a tapestry-like pattern made up of
many figures. And with this intensified focus on individual figures in
painting came a new concern for how they looked as they moved and
acted in space. The invention of the technique of representing foreshor-
tened figures by Greek artists of the late Archaic period was from both a
technical and conceptual point of view one of the most profound
changes ever to have occurred in the history of art. It marks the
beginning of a long series of phases, lasting up to the twentieth century,
in which the artist’s role as a recorder of passing sensuous phenomena,
and his mastery of the means of making his records exact, came to rival in
importance his role as a narrator of stories and ideas. In the works of the
great red-figure Pioneers of about 510 b.c., such as Euphronius,
Euthymides and Phintias, one senses the excitement that seems to have
accompanied experimentation with foreshortened forms. As they strove
to outdo one another in their attempts to capture particularly difficult
views of the body’s movements in space (folded knees seen from the
front, the bottom of twisted feet, etc.), naturalistic representation seems
for a brief (and in the overall context of Greek art, rare) time to have been
the principal aim of their art.

What is documented in vase painting was almost certainly also true of
mural and other forms of large-scale painting. Pliny ( HN xxxv.56)
credits a painter named Cimon of Cleonae with the invention of
katagrapha or obliquae imagines, almost certainly a reference to foreshor-
tened forms. What little evidence there is for Cimon ’s date suggests that
he was active in the late sixth century b.c. He may have been a metic who
worked in Athens.

Another aspect of the new naturalism of late Archaic vase painting
was a gradual democratization of subject matter. Black-figure painters of
the Pisistratan era, perhaps echoing the taste of Pisistratus himself, had
favoured scenes from the world of myth and heroic legend. Their
successors in the first phase of red-figure, by contrast, showed an
increasing fondness for scenes which reflected the everyday experience
of the average citizen, such as athletes in the gymnasium, music teachers
with their pupils, and symposia. While many of these subjects, particu-
larly those of athletes, may have been chosen in part because they offered
opportunities for cultivating the new interest in anatomical detail and
foreshortening, it is also possible that social and political changes
contributed to their popularity. The overthrow of the tyranny in Athens
and the creation of the Cleisthenic democracy may have created an
atmosphere in which it was both desirable and profitable for painters to

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STYLE AND ICONOLOGY

173

depict the common man busily involved in familiar, unpretentious
aspects of civic life.

Still another feature of the move toward capturing familiar experience
in art was an interest in conveying emotion through facial expression.
The grimace of the giant Antaeus on Euphronius’ crater in the Louvre 1
or the wince of pain on Patroclus’ face as Achilles binds his wounds on
the Sosias Painter’s cylix in Berlin 2 herald a new category of artistic
expression which was to be a major preoccupation of Greek artists for
half a century.

Because sculpture is a slower, more intractable medium that lends
itself less readily to rapid experimentation than does vase painting, its
naturalism in the late Archaic period is perhaps less obvious. Relief
sculptures, which are closely tied to the conventions of painting, show it
most clearly (e.g., the athletes’ base in the National Museum in Athens), 3
but a naturalistic trend is also detectable in venerable forms of Archaic
free-standing sculpture, like the kouros. Kouroi had always provided an
opportunity for experiments in the representation of anatomy, but the
purpose of early and mature Archaic kouroi was essentially symbolic and/
or iconic rather than naturalistic. The naturalism of the latest Archaic
kouroi , such as Ptoon 20 (National Museum, Athens) or the Strangford
kouros (British Museum), seems, by contrast, to be an end in itself and to
clash with the rigid, 150-year-old format of the type. Abandonment of
the type around 480 b.c. and its replacement by figures like the ‘Critian
boy’ (Acropolis Museum, Athens), which allowed for the representation
of internal movement, seems to have been an inevitable step. 4

In one way the naturalism of the late Archaic period was distinctly
untypical of the Greek artistic tradition as a whole. From the Geometric
period onward every successive style of Greek art has regularly been
disciplined by strict canons of formal order. Hence it is not surprising
that the pervasive, free-wheeling but seemingly directionless humanism
of the decades around 500 b.c. should eventually, in the Early Classical
period ( c . 480—450), have been subjected to such discipline. Some cause
seems to be required, however, to explain the particular forms which the
new discipline took. That cause, in all likelihood, was the series of crises,
from the Ionian Revolt of 499 to the battle of Plataea in 479, which
constitute the Persian Wars.

The conflict with the Persians, as Herodotus and Aeschylus make
clear, was as much a moral as a military one. By restraining the

1 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 214-30; Boardman 1975 (1 17) 29-36.

2 Boardman 1975 (1 17) figs. 23, 50.1; P/s. to Vol. IV, pi. 149.

3 Boardman 1978 (1 i8a) fig. 242, cf. 241.

4 Boardman 1978 (1 i8a) figs. 147 (Critian boy), 180 (Ptoon 20), 182 (Strangford).

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8 a . art: archaic to classical

competitiveness and aggressiveness with which they had traditionally
approached one another, the allied Greek city states had overcome an
enormous and seemingly irrational power that had threatened them with
extinction. The religious and moral significance of this achievement
from the Greek point of view was most forcefully expressed in the Persae
of Aeschylus (especially lines 807—29) where the Persians’ defeat was
depicted as punishment for their hybris and the Greeks’ victory as the
fruit of their self-restraint. Moderation and self-control, in other words,
came to be viewed as divinely sanctioned virtues, and those who spurned
them did so at the risk of divine vengeance. Morality became a matter of
attitude as well as action.

The sober cultural atmosphere created by this new moral self-
consciousness had a deep influence on the art of the Early Classical
period. It inspired a new simplicity and austerity of form, particularly in
the use of ornament, which have led some to refer to the sculpture of the
period as the ‘severe style’, and it also led to a strong interest in
expressing states of consciousness and their moral implications in art.
Further, the fact that the Persian conflict as a historical event, as a
particular moment of time and change, seemed to have a deep religious
significance and be important in some cosmic process, appears to have
provoked a general interest in the significance of change, whether
physical, emotional or historical.

Nowhere are these traits more vividly and movingly exhibited than in
the greatest monument of the period, the temple of Zeus at Olympia
(470-45 7). 5 The austere, unadorned features of Heracles and Athena on
its sculptured metopes have the strength and spareness of the temple’s
Doric columns. Their style represents an extreme rejection of the
decorative ornateness of Archaic art and of the Oriental heritage which
was at the root of much of that ornateness. It was an appropriate, perfect
style, however, for the serious, at times meditative, atmosphere of the
metopes, in which Heracles’ changing states of consciousness, his
weariness, anxiety and steadfastness, for example, are explored as he
passes from youth to advancing states of maturity.

In the sculptures of the two great pediments of the temple, the use of
expressions of consciousness to bring out the moral significance of
narrative subjects is developed within two particular categories which
Early Classical artists (and the critics, like Aristotle, who later wrote
about them) seem to have considered fundamental — character (ethos) and
emotional reaction (pathos ). The quiet foreboding of the east pediment
forces the viewer to enter into the minds and characters of Pelops,
Oenomaus and others and to share the moral consternation of the ‘old
seer’ (figure N) as he ponders their fate. In the elemental clash of the west

5 Ashmole and Yalouris 1967 (1 5); Ashmole 1972 (1 6) chs. 1-3; Boardman 1985 (1 20) ch. 4.

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pediment the civilized restraint of the Lapiths, in whom only a trace of
pathos betrays itself in facial expression, is pitted against the barbaric
abandon of the Centaurs in such a way that the moral clash of the Persian
Wars is re-enacted in symbolic form. The west pediment also offers
examples of another distinctive stylistic trait of Early Classical Greek art:
the representation of physical motion by diagrammatic patterns of
composition which, by isolating obvious stopping points in a particular
motion (like the back-swing of a discus thrower), convey the nature of an
entire movement. In ancient art criticism such patterns were called
rhythmoi.

The features that give the Olympia sculptures their special force —
surface severity, concern with change through time, study of character
and emotion, clear definition of motion - pervade, naturally, other
works of the period, either singly or in combination. An extreme of
surface severity is apparent not only in original sculptures like the
Charioteer of Delphi, 6 but also in what were apparently particularly
admired works that are now preserved in Roman copies - the ‘Aspasia’
type, for example, and the ‘Hestia Guistiniani’. 7 Ethos and pathos seem to
have been principal features of the paintings of Polygnotus of Thasos,
whose elaborate Sack oj Troy and Underworld are described by Pausanias
(x. 25-30).® On extant monuments character and emotion are captured
with unusual vividness on the two great cups in Munich by the
Penthesilea Painter, one representing the story of Achilles and Penthesi-
lea and the other that of Apollo and Tityus. 9 In a sense almost all the best
works of Early Classical sculpture and vase painting can be said to
convey ethos through their evocation of an atmosphere of noble
awareness. This quality is particularly apparent, for example, in the two
bronze warriors found in the sea off the southern coast of Italy near
Riace. Even though the original context of the Riace bronzes and the
meaning of the group to which they presumably belonged are uncertain
and debated, their embodiment of character (or perhaps two distinct
characters) is unmistakable. 10

The emergence of rhythmoi can be seen in the figures from the east
pediment of the temple of Aphaea at Aegina (about 480 b.c.), 11 and their
culmination appears in works like the bronze striding god from
Artemisium (National Museum, Athens). 12 Exceptionally clear, almost
textbook, examples of rhythmos are again preserved in Roman copies of

6 Chamoux 1955 (1 44); Boardman 198} (1 20) fig. 34.

7 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 191-3; Boardman 1985 (1 20) figs. 74—5.

8 Robertson 1975 (1 140) ch. 4, iv; cf. Barron 1972 (1 9).

9 Arias ct a l. 1962 (1 4) pis. 168—71; Boardman 1989 (1 21) fig. 80.

10 Due Bronze 1985 (1 63); Boardman 1985 (1 20) figs. 38-9.

11 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 165-7; Boardman 1978 (1 i8a) fig. 206.

12 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 196—7; Boardman 1985 (1 20) fig. 35.

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176 8 a . ART: ARCHAIC TO CLASSICAL

famous lost originals - the Tyrannicides of Critius and Nesiotes, for
example, and the Discobolus of Myron. 13 In vase painting examples of it
are abundant.

All of these features can be seen as aspects of an effort to impose a new
order, clarity and certitude on the experiments in naturalism that had
characterized the late Archaic period. The severe style brought a
canonical form of sorts to the desire for more ‘real-looking’ anatomy and
drapery. Categories of ethos and pathos brought definition and signifi-
cance to the raw, if powerful, emotional expression that was present in
the works of artists like the Sosias and Kleophrades Painters; and
rhythmoi imposed order and definition on the changing appearance of
figures in motion that had so captivated the painters who invented
foreshortening. In the sense that it marks a reassertion of the desire for
archetypal forms that had long characterized the Greek artistic tradition,
the art of the Early Classical period can be seen as a reaction to the
naturalism of the immediately preceding decades. The range of exper-
iences for which archetypal forms were deemed necessary, however, had
been expanded.

Because time and change took on a new significance in the Early
Classical period, so too did the landmarks that mark the course of
change, important historical events and personalities. Although extant
monuments do not document the fact particularly well, literary sources
make it clear that historicity first became a significant element in Greek
art at this time. Actual portraits of historical personalities, especially
political and military leaders like Themistocles and Miltiades, began to
appear, 14 and the creation of at least one very detailed historical painting,
a mural by Micon and Panaenus in the Stoa Poikile in Athens represent-
ing the battle of Marathon, is documented (Paus. 1.15.3; Ael. NA vii. 3 8).

After 450 b.c., with the Persian threat in full recession and the politics
of Greece dominated by the long struggle between the Athenian and
Spartan alliances, the spirit of sophrosyne, moderation, that had pervaded
the thought of the previous thirty years yielded to a new intellectual
climate in which the extremes of idealism on the one hand and
pragmatism on the other were juxtaposed and often kept in a state of
tension. The art of the High Classical period reflects this changed
atmosphere. In one way it pushes forward the Early Classical period’s
interest in the perception of change, and in another it reasserts the
timeless feeling of mature Archaic art.

The story of High Classical Greek art is for the most part the story of
Athenian art, and it is in the great monuments of the Periclean building

13 Pis . to Vol . 71 /, pi. 141; Robertson 1975 (1 140) 185-HS, 340-1; BrunnsSker 1971 (1 33);
Boardman 1985 (1 20) fig. 60.

14 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 187-8, pi. 62d; Richter 1984(1 133) 210-12, 166-9.

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programme that the emerging dual nature in the art of the time is most
apparent. With its carefully calculated sjmmetria, its pervasive 9:4
proportion, the Parthenon carries on the ancient Greek quest to express
formal perfection, to express a kind of eidos. On the other hand its well-
known refinements take into account the uncertain, subjective, fluctuat-
ing nature of sense experience. 15 Partly by compensating for optical
distortion, partly, perhaps, by exaggerating the effects of curves, and
partly by creating a tension between what one expects to see and actually
does see, the refinements of the Parthenon force one to dwell on the
uncertain nature of one’s own perceptions and to ponder the relationship
between the ideal and the actual.

The same dual nature appears in the style of the sculptures of the
Parthenon, tentatively in the metopes, with full maturity in the frieze,
and with a hint of mannered exaggeration in the pediments. 16 The
idealism of these sculptures - the simple geometry of their faces, their
serenity, the youthfulness (symbolizing timelessness) that pervades their
forms, and, in the frieze, the bestowal of divine attributes on the ordinary
Athenian citizen - has always been recognized. Along with it, however,
there is a new manner of handling the texture and movement of drapery
and hair which relies on indistinctness, on a sense of fleeting impression,
for its effect. The clear, patterned forms of Archaic and the simple
solidity of Early Classical drapery are replaced by irregular eddies,
furrows and shadows. The flickering, transitory impressions that these
forms make, like the effects of the Parthenon’s architectural refinements,
have to be grasped and given compositional unity by the viewer, and his
subjective reactions become the interpreter of their meaning.

The way the Parthenon sculptures bring together two fundamental
modes of perception, intuitive perception of the ideal and sense
perception of passing phenomena, and hold them in harmony may
reflect the influence of, or at least in a spontaneous way run parallel to, a
similar dualism in philosophical speculation during the fifth century b.c.
One tradition, characteristic of most of the pre-Socratics but most
obviously of the Pythagoreans, accepted the perceived universe as
having objective reality and adopted an essentially idealistic position by
maintaining that its underlying truth could be demonstrated by math-
ematics and geometry. A second, relativist tradition, developed among
the Sophists with Protagoras as its chief exponent, argued that subjective
experience is the only certain reality and that men’s personal impressions
or perceptions were thus the ‘measure of all things’. That these
philosophical currents might have had an influence on Pericles and the

15 Dinsmoor 1950 (1 60) 164-9; Coulton *977 (* 5 l ) *08—12.

16 Brommcr 1963, 1967, 1977, 1979(1 25-7, *9); Robertson 1975 (1 i4o)ch. 5; Berger, ed. 1984(1
1 1); Boardman 1985 (1 20) ch. 10; Boardman and Finn 1983 (1 22).

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i7»

8 a . art: archaic to classical

circle of intellectuals and artists, including Phidias, who were associated
with him is not entirely far-fetched, since Pericles is known to have had
close contact with contemporary philosophers. (He was a patron and
friend of Anaxagoras and on at least one occasion sought the advice of
Protagoras.) In contemporary literature of a not strictly philosophical
nature it is clear that this juxtaposition of idealism and pragmatism of
various sorts was also ‘in the air’. It is at the heart of Sophocles’ Antigone
(with something like Parthenonian idealism getting its most famous
paean in the third stasimon), and it colours the picture of Athenian life
that Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles in the Funeral Speech of
43 1 -

Although a fusion of idealism with a subjectivism that dwelt on
passing impressions would always characterize Classical, and much of
Hellenistic, art, it can be argued that, after the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War and the great plague, the balance tipped somewhat
toward the latter quality. Capturing impressions seems to have become
an end in itself in much of the art of the last three decades of the fifth
century. In Greek painting, for example, a second revolution occurred
which was as influential in its long-range effects as the invention of
foreshortening in the late sixth century b.c. Graphic perspective (the
illusion of spatial depth through the diminution of forms as they recede
into it) and shading (the illusion of corporeal mass through the
modulation of light and shade) were both developed for the first time in
this period. Tradition attributed the invention of the former to a Samian
painter named Agatharchus, who worked in Athens, and of the latter to
an Athenian named Apollodorus, known as the skiagraphos (shader, or
shadow painter), but other widely admired artists like Zeuxis undoub-
tedly also played a role in the development of these techniques.
Surviving contemporary monuments preserve only the barest hints of
these achievements (vase painting, with the partial exception of white-
ground lekythoi, could not be adapted to shading at all and only in a
rudimentary way to perspective), but Etruscan funerary paintings and
Macedonian tomb paintings dating from late in the next century
document the direction in which Greek painting now began to move. 17

In Greek sculpture of the later fifth century b.c. this fascination with
the effects of impression comes out most dearly in the continuing
development of the style of rendering drapery (variously known as the
‘wind blown’, ‘flying’, or ‘wet’ drapery style) that had begun to evolve in
the Parthenon sculptures. The style was already fully developed in the
pediments of the Parthenon (finished 432) and underwent an increas-
ingly mannered transformation, aimed sometimes at evoking a sense of
excitement and sometimes at producing a soothing, elegant, calligraphic

17 Robertson 1975 (1 140) chs. 4.VI, 6.iv— v, 7.1V— v.

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STYLE AND ICONOLOGY I JCf

effect, in monuments designed later in the century like the Nike temple
parapet (c. 42 5— 420), 18 the Nike of Paeonius at Olympia ( c . 420), 19 and the
frieze of the temple of Apollo at Bassae (r. 400). 20

Vase painting in the second half of the fifth century largely loses a
distinct stylistic development of its own and tends to mirror the reigning
styles of the monumental arts. Artists like the Achilles Painter and the
Cleophon Painter, for example, absorb the style of the Parthenon frieze,
while later in the century artists like the Eretria Painter, the Meidias
Painter, and others adopt the wind-blown drapery style. 21 Whether the
painters who adopted the latter borrowed it from sculpture or whether it
had an independent existence of its own in large-scale painting is difficult
to decide, but the importance attached to the perfection of line and
contour in the art of one of the major painters of the time, Parrhasius
(Pliny, HN xxxv.68), perhaps suggests that the style had a separate
development in mural and easel painting.

What relationship, if any, this reigning calligraphic style in the later
fifth century bore to the historical climate in which it was created is a
puzzling question. Thucydides conveys the feeling of an increasingly
dark era of Greek history, with war, plague and civil strife generating
harshness and despair. Yet the art of the period conveys a feeling of
carefree, airy, cosmetic elegance which can be paralleled in other arts (for
example, the rhetoric of Gorgias, the ornate ‘new music’ of Timotheus
of Miletus, and some of the choral hymns in the dramas of Euripides). It
may be that ornamental elegance was not so much an effect of as a
reaction to the temper of its time. The pursuit of fantasy as an escape
from an increasingly threatening, oppressive and burdensome world has
parallels in other cultures.

The glitter of creations like the Nike temple parapet, in any case, did
not altogether eclipse a more sombre side in the art of the late fifth
century. It is there, as one might expect, in works of funerary art like the
white-ground lekythoi 22 and a remarkable series of grave stelae. 23 The
latter, judging by their style and high quality, were probably the work of
sculptors who had learned their trade in the palmier days when the
Parthenon was being built and who, in this troubled period, had to take
whatever modest commissions came their way. The most striking
example of a new subdued atmosphere, however, is found in the
Erechtheum, 24 the last of the great structures conceived for the Periclean

18 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 349-50; Boardman 1985 (1 20) figs. 129-30.

19 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 287-9; Boardman 1985 (1 20) fig. 139.

20 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 356-9, pi. ii9C,d. 21 Boardman 1989 (1 21) ch. 5.

22 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 324-6; Bruno 1977 (1 54); Boardman 1989 (1 21) ch. 4.

23 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 563-72; Boardman 1985 (1 20) 183-5.

24 Paton et al . 1927 (i 122); Dinsmoor 1950 (1 60) 187-95; Bervc and Gruben 1963 (1 13) 182-6;
Lawrence 1973 (1 95) 164-6.

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8 a . art: archaic to classical

i 80

building programme on the Athenian acropolis. This complicated
temple was still being worked on when Athens was compelled, at last, to
surrender to Sparta. It was designed to house those ancient, mysterious
and numinous forces which the Athenians in the heyday of the
Parthenon may have been inclined to subdue or suppress but which, in
their travail and disillusionment at the end of the fifth century, they must
have felt it was important to placate. Along with the ancient wooden
image of Athena and the altars and tombs of early heroes and kings, it
enshrined, like a great reliquary, snakes, a miraculous tree, a miraculous
pool, a sacred rock, and other holy tokens. For all its jewel-like surface
elegance, the Erechtheum was really a shrine to the same irrational forces
that haunted Euripides in the Bacchae.

The foregoing analysis of the stylistic and conceptual development of
High Classical Greek art is, as already noted, essentially an interpretation
of the art of Athens. Given the nature of the art and literature which
survives for study, this Athenian bias is inevitable, and it is natural to
wonder whether such bias distorts our picture of Greek art as a whole
during the second half of the fifth century b.c. What evidence there is
from outside Athens (mainly sculpture from Olympia, Bassae, and the
islands, and vase painting from Corinth and Boeotia) suggests, however,
that this is not the case. It is known from inscriptions and literary sources
that many of the artists who worked in Classical Athens were not
Athenian citizens. Presumably many of them moved on after a time,
carrying the style of Phidias and his pupils with them. In any case, it does
appear that the art of other areas of Greece was widely, and fairly rapidly,
‘athenianized’ at this time. The one artist of great importance who to
some degree seems to have remained aloof from Athens and to have
cultivated his own distinct style was Polyclitus of Argos . 25 His interest in
developing a perfect canon of proportions probably had a closer spiritual
link to the art of the Archaic and Early Classical periods than it did to the
art of Phidias. But Polyclitus too was clearly an idealist, and if the
seeming stylistic progression from his Doryphorus to his Diadumenus
that one can detect in Roman copies has any validity, his idealism may
have gradually taken on an Athenian cast.

II. ARTISTS AND PATRONS

Artists as a group were never accorded the reverence and adulation in
antiquity that has come to them in post-Renaissance times, and the idea
of the artist as an inspired visionary, to the degree that it existed at all in
the ancient world, belongs to late Hellenistic and Roman literature. Yet
even when these facts are taken into account, it can still be argued, on the

25 Robertson 1975 (1 140) 528—40; von Steuben 1975 (1 158); Boardman 1985 (120) 205-6.

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ARTISTS AND PATRONS I 8 I

basis of literary sources which deal with the careers and work of Classical
artists, that the emergence of sculptors and painters as figures of some
social prominence in the Greek world, figures who were appreciated for
their intellects and strong personalities as well as their skill, first occurred
in the fifth century b.c.

A relatively early case in point is Polygnotus of Thasos. His
widespread reputation is attested by the fact that, according to Pliny
( HN xxxv. 59), the Amphictyonies awarded him free food and lodging,
presumably in recognition of his remarkable paintings at Delphi. This
was an honour normally awarded to such prominent figures as victors in
the Olympic Games. He also moved in prominent social circles. Gossip
preserved by Plutarch maintained that Elpinice, the sister of Cimon, was
Polygnotus’ mistress and that he used her portrait for the face of one of
the Trojan Women in a mural in the Stoa Poikile (Plut. Cim. 4). Even if
that story was only gossip, it is very likely that he was a friend and
follower of Cimon. Plutarch relates that he would not take payment like
a ‘common workman’ for his paintings in the Stoa Poikile but did them
as a patriotic offering to Athens (where he had attained citizenship), an
anecdote that conjures up the picture of a man of pride, zeal, and perhaps
also a certain amount of power.

While Cimon’s patronage of Polygnotus is a possibility, Pericles’
patronage of Phidias is a fact beyond doubt. As episkopos of the whole
Periclean building programme, Phidias must have become a man of
considerable influence and perhaps also wealth. He was prominent
enough to be the object of an attack by Pericles’ political enemies, and
when this attack ultimately forced him to leave Athens (he was charged
with embezzling gold designated for the Athena Parthenos), he quickly
received the most important commission that a sculptor of the period
could aspire to, the assignment to make the great chryselephantine image
for the temple of Zeus at Olympia. In addition to being an intimate of
Pericles, it is fair to assume that Phidias was on close terms with the circle
of intellectuals whom Pericles befriended, Anaxagoras and Protagoras,
for example, and that he exchanged ideas with them. He himself must be
considered one of the prominent intellectuals of the age, and through the
medium of his own sculptures and of those, like the architectural
sculptures of the Parthenon, which bore the stamp of his influence, his
ideas had a lasting effect on the ancient world and continue to be felt even
now.

Other scattered anecdotes relating to artists who worked somewhat
later in the century also evoke a picture of prominent reputations and of
strong, often contentious, personalities. The services of Agatharchus
were considered so valuable by Alcibiades that he locked the painter in
his house in order to force him to finish a work (Plut. Ale. 16).

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8 a. art: archaic to classical

Agatharchus may have had as vivid a personality as the man who locked
him up. He is said to have written a treatise on graphic perspective (Vitr.
De Arch, vn.praef 1 1), of which, as already noted, he was considered the
inventor. He also boasted about his ability to paint with unusual
rapidity. His successor and apparent rival Zeuxis countered this boast
with the sober declaration that his own paintings took him a long time,
implying that the most obvious result of Agatharchus’ quickness was
carelessness (Plut. Per. 1 3). Humility, as this anecdote suggests, was no
more typical of Zeuxis than of the rivals whom he taunted. According to
Pliny, ‘he acquired such great wealth that he showed it off at Olympia by
having his name woven into the checks of his cloaks in gold letters.
Afterwards he decided to give away his works as gifts, since he felt that
no price could be considered equal to their true worth’; and he was so
pleased with one of his paintings, a picture of Penelope, ‘that he wrote
beneath it a verse which as a result has become famous: “You could
criticize this more easily than you could imitate it”’ ( HN xxxv.62— 3).
Equally flamboyant was Zeuxis’ contemporary and rival Parrhasius. ‘No
one ever made use of his art more insolently than he,’ Pliny records, ‘for
he even laid claim to certain cognomens, calling himself the “Habrodiai-
tos” [lover of luxury] and in some other verses the “Prince of Painting”,
claiming that the art had been brought to perfection by him’ (HN
xxxv. 71). The verses referred to by Pliny may be those recorded by
Athenaeus (543D-E), in which Parrhasius describes himself as the
‘foremost practitioner of art among the Greeks’ and claims that ‘the clear
limits of this art have been revealed by my hand’. Along with this kind of
vanity and flamboyance, there is even a hint, if late sources can be
trusted, of contempt for public opinion among the artists of the era.
Lucian describes Zeuxis as reacting in disgust when people were dazzled
by the subject matter of his Centaur Familj but were oblivious to the
painting’s technical excellence ( Zeuxis 3), and Aelian depicts Polyclitus
as taunting visitors to his workshop for their lack of sound judgement
(KH xiv. 8).

Even if these are simply amusing anecdotes invented in later centuries,
they do point to an important fact about at least some of the prominent
artists of the fifth century, that they were literate, self-conscious
theoreticians who were concerned with defining and explaining the
principles of their art. The foremost figure in this respect was clearly
Polyclitus. His Canon, written to explain the system of proportions
( sjmmetria ) which was the basis of the perfect beauty of his sculptures,
seems to have been a quasi-philosophical work strongly influenced by
Pythagoreanism. 26 The Canon was the most famous but not the only
example of such a treatise. Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon (along

26 Pollitt 1974(1 128) 14-23.

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ARTISTS AND PATRONS I 8 3

with a certain Carpion, perhaps an error for Callicrates), is said by
Vitruvius to have written a treatise about the temple (vii. praef. 12);
Agatharchus, as already noted, wrote on perspective; and a number of
painters in the fourth century also wrote about their art ( CAH vi 2 , ch.
1 30). 27 The philosophical overtones that can be detected in the fragments
and descriptions of Polyclitus’ Canon make it probable that the work was
something more than simply a workshop manual designed to instruct
pupils, and it is likely that this was true of other artists’ writings as well.
Like Vitruvius’ De Architectural which is descended from them, their
purpose, at least in part, was probably to demonstrate that the artist was
an important, thoughtful functionary in his culture and deserved to be
taken seriously.

To a degree they achieved their aim. Many Classical artists, of course,
laboured in obscurity and were no doubt thought of simply as craftsmen.
This was obviously the case with those obscure but gifted sculptors who
carved the frieze of the Erechtheum and whose names, otherwise
unknown, are recorded in the building accounts of the temple. But when
we read Isocrates, writing not in late Antiquity but only a few decades
after the end of the fifth century, claiming that his own speeches had no
more similarity to conventional courtroom speeches than the art of
Phidias had to figurine making or the art of Zeuxis and Parrhasius had to
sign painting ( Antid . 2), it is clear that these artists at least had become
celebrities in their own time.

27 Poilitt 1974(1 128) 23—4.

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CHAPTER 8b

CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

R. E. WYCHERLEY

The Greek city was a creation of the Archaic period, in architectural
form as in political, religious and social life. The fifth century was a time
of continued development and of refinement. This was still strongly
concentrated in the temple, and in the Doric and Ionic orders. In other
elements of the city there was a good deal of what one might call non-
architecture. Many activities took place under the open sky on a piece of
ground demarcated for the purpose. The city centre, the Agora, was a
loose aggregation of mostly simple buildings around an open square.
Buildings specifically designed were slow in making their appearance
and attaining a complete form. The ubiquitous and adaptable stoa
supplied the deficiency to some extent. Houses were unpretentious; and
though the best of them were well built and commodious, their outward
treatment gave no architectural distinction to the narrow streets. Next to
the major temples, the city walls were the most impressive works of
architecture.

Cities old and new were built on an endless variety of sites - around an
acropolis or on one side, on a terraced slope, on a ridge or spur, headland
or peninsula, on ground which rose theatre-like from a harbour,
occasionally even on level or featureless ground; and the way in which
the architectural elements were adapted to their setting varied enor-
mously. Many old cities, especially in Greece proper, kept the irregular,
loosely-knit form which they had attained by expansion, gradual or
spasmodic, around acropolis, Agora or, on some sites, age-old shrines.
Of course fine effects were obtained even in these, in general aspect and
in siting of particular monuments, notably the walls. But we now have
evidence to show that from the Archaic period onwards more deliberate
planning, based on a rectangular pattern, was applied both in the east and
in the west. In the fifth century we see in this art too a refinement of
methods. Hippodamus of Miletus, who for Aristotle and others was the
master city-planner, lived through almost the whole of the century.

There was no dramatic change in materials and methods of construc-
tion, such as might have altered the character of Greek architecture and

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enlarged its scope. The use of stone for the main structure of temples had
already been fully developed. Tools and equipment remained simple and
even rudimentary; but this was compensated by extreme care and
delicacy in handling, shaping and fitting.

The blocks were laboriously hewn out in the quarries with pick, chisel
and wedge (not by saw till much later) to the approximate size and shape.
On Pentelicum they were slid down the mountain-side on ramps by
means of sledges. Then they were loaded on strong waggons or
occasionally rollers, and drawn slowly by bullock teams, which for the
biggest loads comprised many yokes. On the site the stones were more
accurately shaped; some finishing touches, notably the fluting of
columns, were not given till they were in position and safe from serious
damage. Curiously, in our period we do not find the truly gigantic blocks
used in the colossal Archaic temples, nor monolithic columns except on a
small scale. The architrave blocks, set on top of the columns, in the
Archaic temple of Artemis at Ephesus and Temple GT at Selinus,
weighed forty tons or more. Such heavy stuff was raised by means of
‘ramps, levers and massed manpower ’. 1 By the end of the sixth century
simple cranes were in use, but they would not take such enormous loads.
In some major fifth-century temples the architrave consisted not of
single massive blocks but of lighter slabs set side by side. Even in the
colossal Olympieum at Acragas, the architrave, because of its peculiarly
complex construction, did not require blocks of more than fourteen
tons.

Marble was used on a bigger scale in the fifth century, for whole
temples and occasionally other buildings. White or off-white marble was
used; coloured stone did not come into favour till much later. ‘Stones
white, sound, unspotted’ are specified in an Attic building inscription . 2
Athens was favoured above all other cities in her plentiful supplies. The
western cities in particular were at a disadvantage. For sculptural
adornment, limited supplies were sometimes brought from a great
distance or even transported by sea. For the sculpture of the temple of
Zeus at Olympia, Parian marble was used; the temple was built of a shelly
local stone, given a finish resembling marble, as were many temples, by
the use of a fine white stucco.

Most cities could draw on quarries of serviceable stone at a moderate
distance, but the builders sometimes went further afield for a better
stone; for example Corinthian poros was taken to Delphi. We find a
variety of limestones in use, greyish or creamy or yellowish, neither
extremely hard nor very soft. These, the common Greek building stones,

1 Coulton 1977(1 51)48, 84; cf. Martin 1965 (1 106) 200-21.

2 IG ii 2 1666; cf. R. E. Wycherley, BSA 68 (197}) $51.

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I 86 8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

are what can properly be called poros , though the term is not very clearly
defined by our ancient authorities . 3 The use of very hard, intractable
limestones, as found in the Acropolis rock for example, becomes
comparatively rare in this period; the use of rough conglomerate, mainly
in massive foundations, begins in the latter part of the fifth century and
becomes common later. Metal — iron and lead - was used for dowels and
clamps; iron bars were occasionally inserted as reinforcements for
architraves. Roof timbers supported tiles of fine baked clay, rarely of
marble. Baked brick was exceptional. The commonest material of all was
still unbaked, sun-dried brick, used over a stone socle in all houses, some
public buildings and even in massive fortification walls. Athens was a
city not so much of marble or any kind of stone as of mud-brick. This
does not mean poor flimsy construction. Unbaked brick is a very
serviceable material, strong, durable and not unsightly if well main-
tained, protected from the elements by tiles above and a coat of white
lime-plaster on its face. Still, conservatism and economy in material and
methods imposed limitations on Classical Greek architecture, bonds
which were not burst until the Roman period.

Much has been written recently on ‘the economics of temple build-
ing’, though the evidence, largely from inscriptions, is far from com-
plete . 4 Money and manpower set strict limits. At Acragas in the course of
the century a series of temples was built; at Athens a great building
programme was carried out in the second half of the century. Very few
cities could build on this scale; most had to be content with two or three
major temples, very seldom as large as the Parthenon, and numerous
modest shrines. Commercial prosperity under enlightened leadership
provided the conditions for ambitious building; some temples and stoas
were victory monuments, to which the spoils of war might contribute; in
good times pious, public-spirited or ostentatious citizens might be
expected to make contributions.

The procedure for bringing into being a great temple or other
important building was normally as follows, in a democratically gov-
erned city, or under enlightened tyranny. A proposal was passed in the
Assembly. A small supervisory commission of epistatai was set up. An
architect was appointed, sometimes more than one. Work of various
kinds was put out on contract piecemeal; there were no great building
firms who would take on the whole job. Specifications were drawn up.
As regards plans and drawings, evidence is slight and not clear; probably
at some points it was a case of solvitur aedificando, in our period.
Peradeigmata or prototypes were made of elements which had to be
accurately reproduced in numbers. As the work gradually proceeded

3 Bradcen and McGregor, eds. 1974 (a 9) 179—87.

4 Burford 1969 (1 40) and 1965 (1 39). On the epigraphical evidence see Scranton i960 (1 1 50).

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CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES 187

there were annual scrutinies of the expenditure, submitted to the
Assembly.

The architect 5 was no mere designer at the drawing-board but a man
with practical ability and experience, an engineer. The closeness of his
relation with the builders varied from site to site. The design of a temple
was of course largely determined by tradition and convention, and
sometimes by special circumstances; but there was still room for
originality, for variation and experiment, for a constant striving towards
the idea of perfection, in the proportions of the temple as a whole and of
its constituent parts, in the relation of particular elements to one another
in form and dimension, in the treatment of the details of the orders, in the
use of the so-called ‘refinements’. The western architects had ideas of
their own, more particularly in the Archaic period. Quite apart from
certain buildings of exceptional plan, the great fifth-century architects
such as Ictinus were by no means merely reproducers of a stereotype.

The profession was an honourable one, practised by men of good
standing and education, but our authorities seem to imply that it did not
carry the prestige of the leading sculptors. Occasionally a sculptor
performed the function of architect too. We know the names of some
scores of architects, but are told very little about them. Remuneration
was not very high. Some, we see in the inscriptions, were paid not much
more than their best craftsmen.

Of the workforce many were unskilled labourers; some were carters,
and of these some were no doubt provided by the farmers who supplied
the teams of oxen. Even at the lower level large hordes of workmen
would not be available; the skilled workers in stone, wood and metal
were apt to be in short supply, and few cities if any would have enough in
more or less permanent residence fora big sustained programme. Work
was intermittent, and in pursuit of it craftsmen commuted over a wide
area. Athens was a kind of clearing-house, and so were the great
international sanctuaries. Changing political conditions created compli-
cations, with the result that work sometimes proceeded in spasmodic
fashion.

The Doric and Ionic orders, fully developed in the sixth century,
attained perfection by the middle of the fifth. The simple single curve of
the Doric capital then attained its most subtle form and so did the volute
superimposed on the convex echinus of the Ionic capital. The Doric frieze
of triglyphs and metopes was still ‘petrified carpentry ’, 6 though the
relation of the classical ornamental forms to their structural prototypes,
beam ends and so forth, is a matter of dispute. The junction of Doric

5 Coulton 1977 (1 51); cf. Clarke 1963 (1 46).

6 Lawrence 1973 (f 95) 99; cf. Coulton 1977 (1 5 1) 60-4, 1 30-1. On Doric design in general see
Coulton 1974, 1975, 1979(148,49, 52); Winter 1976, 1978(1 180, 181).

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

Fig. u. Plan of the fifth-century sanctuary of Aphaea on Aegina. (After Bcrgquist
1967 (1 >2) plan 3.)

friezes at the corners of a building created difficulties, solved by
ingenious manipulation of the widths of triglyphs and metopes. Ionic on
the other hand had problems with its capitals at the corners, where two
adjacent faces required volutes; and this may have been a factor in the
creation of the Corinthian capital, which avoided the difficulty by having
four faces all alike. Corinthian was not a wholly new order; other
elements remained as in Ionic. The invention was attributed to Callima-
chus, the sculptor of the late fifth century who was called ‘katatexitech-
nic’, a word which implies that he wasted his art on over-elaborate detail.
Known to us first at remote Bassae, the Corinthian capital was still used
in a somewhat tentative fashion, mainly for interiors, even in the fourth
century, and finally came into its own in the Olympieum in the second.

Of particular temples, one can hardly do more here than mention
several which represent the norm and one or two which deviate from it
in notable fashion. As a typical example of a well-developed Doric
temple of the beginning of the fifth century we may take the temple of
Aphaea (a local goddess associated with Artemis) at Aegina. The
sanctuary was enlarged and given a more regular form (Fig. 1 2). Built of
local limestone, the temple had a long cella divided by two rows of
columns, with an entrance porch on the east consisting of two columns
between the side walls and a similar porch at the back (without door);
and a pteron , peristyle or outer colonnade of six columns by twelve (Pis. to

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Fig. 1 3 . Temple of Zeus at Olympia, east elevation (o) and plan ( b ). (After Coulton 1 977 (1 5 1 )
figs. 43a, 46a.)

Vol. iv, pi. 1 16). The great temple of Zeus at Olympia, built in the 460s,
has a similar plan on a grander scale (Fig. 1 3).

Athenian buildings, including the Parthenon and the Hephaesteum,
will be considered in chapter 8c below. Meanwhile we may note that in
some great Doric structures Ionic details were incorporated to give
variety and mitigate severity. The Ionic style itself is seen at its most
delicate in the Erechtheum; here the idea of placing a band of ornament
round the top of the column shaft may represent one step towards the
creation of the Corinthian capital.

The great series of Doric temples in the west continues at Paestum,
Selinus ( CAH iv 2 7 5 4-6), and above all Acragas. 7 At the last-named city,
superb sites were found on the ridges to the north and south ( CAH iv 2
777 ) ^4)- Most of the Acragantine temples were of normal type, with

variations; but the Olympieum, begun early in the fifth century and

7 Dc Waele 1980 (1 57) gives a careful study of the temples of Acragas and Paestum (1 58).

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

Fig. 14. Temple of Zeus Olympius at Acragas, west elevation (a) and plan ( b ). (After
Coulton 1977 (1 5 1) figs. 28b, 29b.)

never finished, besides being the only temple of our period which vies in
size with the archaic colossi, was very unusual in form and construction.
Both inner supports and outer columns were built into continuous walls,
and on ledges between the outer columns were placed Telamones, giants
who helped to carry the great weight of the architraves (Fig. 14) (Pis. to
Vol. iv, pi. 266).

Among western buildings of the late fifth century the unfinished
temple at Segesta is of peculiar interest. It raises the whole question
whether a peristyle could stand in its own right, without an inner
structure; in any case it shows the structural independence of the
peristyle. Of a possible cella there are only a few uncertain traces. 8 Some
have suggested that the Segestans merely provided a handsome frame

8 Burford 1961 (1 37).

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CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES I 9 I

for a very simple shrine, which may not have been that of a Greek deity —
Segesta was the capital of the Elymi, a Sicilian community which aspired
to Greek culture. However, the colonnade was built in the best tradition
of Doric architecture, with refinements, and pediments were added; on
the whole it seems likely that an interior structure was planned and even
begun. The columns did not receive their fluting, and bosses for leverage
were left on some blocks. We see on this site as on some others how a
peripteral temple was built from the outside inwards.

The chief architect of the Parthenon, Ictinus, created at Bassae, on a
superb terraced mountainside in Arcadia, a temple of Apollo which,
although at first glance it appears to be orthodox Doric, has several
unusual features (Fig. 15). It has a north— south orientation instead of the
usual east-west. The interior has two rows of Ionic columns, with
unorthodox capitals and bases, engaged in short walls, with a continuous
sculptured frieze above. The back end of the cella is marked off from the
rest by a single column standing between the southernmost pair and is
entered by a door at the southern end of the eastern side, thus forming a
kind of separate shrine. A curious capital (Fig. 16), now lost and known
only from drawings, is thought to have belonged to the single central
column, though it is suggested that the column on either side of this may
have had similar capitals. On an underlying moulding in the shape of an
upturned bell, inner and outer volutes rise on all four sides from a ring of
acanthus leaves. We have here the prototype of the Corinthian capital, in
a somewhat tentative form.

For reasons of expense few sanctuaries received large temples. More
modest shrines still took the form of a simple cella with a columnar
porch, as in the so-called treasuries, with the columns either in antis
(between the projecting side walls), or prostyle, standing in a row in
front. But of the innumerable sanctuaries found in any large city the
majority had no temple at all. All that was needed was the demarcation of
a piece of ground as hieron . 9 This was commonly done by means of simple
marker-stones carrying a minimal inscription; such horoi have been
found in large numbers and in great variety and were an important part
of the urban scene. There might be a solid wall and it might have a
propylon or columnar gateway. Every shrine needed an altar and this
might be a plain stone or something more ornamental, perhaps set on a
platform approached by steps — the magnificent altars which were
elaborate works of architecture in themselves belong to a later date. A
certain area might be designated as an inner sanctum, with its own
entrance and limited access, the rest of the sanctuary being more freely
available to worshippers. Some shrines had a third area one degree more
remotely attached, and used for various purposes, athletics for instance,

9 Bergquist 1967 (1 12) is still relevant for our period; further, Tomlinson 1976 (1 169).

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

or even cultivation. We find a peculiar example in south-eastern Athens,
known not from remains but from details given in an inscription . 10 In
this sanctuary were shrines of the heroic king Codrus, and of a pair of
ancient deities Neleus and Basile. Nothing is said of a temple, but we hear
of ikrta , wooden stands presumably for viewing the ceremonies. An
extensive piece of ground was leased to a tenant for growing olive-trees
- a useful source of revenue for maintenance of the cult; and this tenant
had the right to use the water from an even wider catchment area.

When we come to sanctuaries architecturally more developed we find

10 IG i 3 84; Wycherley i960 (1 185).

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*93

Fig. 1 6. Corinthian capital from the temple of Apollo
Epicurius at Bassae, restored. (After D. Watschitzky,
JOAI 37 (1948) 53 . fig- 5 )

great variety in component elements and arrangement, in accordance
with the nature of the site and the requirements of the cult. The greatest
sanctuaries, especially those which, though they belonged to a particular
city, had assumed a panhellenic character and drew worshippers and
funds from a wide area, attained a complex form in course of time,
without a formal plan. They might include any of the following elements
- an additional temple of the major deity, multiple altars, reflecting the
complexity of the cult; shrines of associated deities and heroes, with
altars or occasionally a temple; quarters for priestly officials; dining-
rooms; store-rooms; ‘treasuries’ (small temple-like buildings commonly
erected by particular cities); and, for a variety of purposes, stoas; all
embedded in a wealth of sculptural monuments, dedications of many
kinds. A theatre and a stadium might be added if the cult so required.
Olympia had a large prjtaneion and a curious old bouleuterion, in fact all the
elements of a city except the residential. Yet even this great sanctuary
remained simple and open in plan in the fifth century (Fig. 17),
dominated by the temples, the archaic Heraeum (in which Zeus too was
worshipped), and the splendid new temple of Zeus. Handsome buildings
for the use of the athletes and distinguished visitors were not added till
later ages. At Delphi a comparable assemblage of monuments was
differently arranged (Fig. 18). The temple stood high up on the hillside
on a terrace. The processional way ascended in a zig-zag to the east front
and the altar, and was lined with treasuries and sculpture. Above were
yet more monuments, and the theatre, and still higher was the stadium.

The stoa played a vital part in Greek life and architecture." Already in
the Archaic period architects realized that the colonnade not only
provided a useful and ornamental addition to a building but was also
important as an adjunct to an open space - agora, shrine, gymnasium and

11 Besides Coukon 1976(1 50) note Martin 1951 (1 105) 449-502.

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8 £. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

Fig. 17. Plan of the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, fifth century b.c. (After Herrmann 1972 (k 40)
158, fig. in.)

TREASURIES

1 Corinth

2 Athens

3 Potidaea

4 Bocotia

5 Cnidus

6 Siphnos

7 Sicyon

Fig. 18. Plan of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, early fifth cenrury b.c.
(After Bergquist 1967(1 12) plan 12.)

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CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES 1 9 5

so forth - putting a roof over a limited part of that space and giving it
ornamentation and partial definition. Archaic stoas were already remar-
kably well developed and varied in form. Again the fifth century had
something to add without introducing a high degree of elaboration —
that was left to the Hellenistic period.

The stoa consisted of a wall and a row of columns; the ends too were
normally short walls or else a short row of columns; or the end walls
might leave room for a column in front, giving a prostyle effect; or again
they might make a return along the front of the building. The addition of
a second storey belongs to a later period. The depth of the stoas varied
greatly. Beyond a certain point a second row of columns was needed and
the interior row could conveniently be made Ionic, contrasting with the
outer Doric. Two-aisled stoas are found already in the Archaic period.
We also have an early example, in the shrine at Delos, of the L-shaped
stoa, a type which may have helped to suggest the pi-shaped stoa, and the
more complex rectangular arrangements found, from the fourth century
onwards, especially in the Ionian type of agora. The most effective way
of creating a finished and satisfying architectural design out of a simple
colonnade was to bring forward a section at either end of the front and
give it a temple-like facade. The earliest and best example is the Stoa of
Zeus at Athens, late in the fifth century (Fig. 29). It had few successors;
for the most part the stoa remained a simple basic type. Sculptural
adornment was applied very sparingly, but occasionally we find hand-
some acroteria on the roof. On the other hand the stoas frequently served
as the setting and background for notable free-standing statues. A few
had paintings on their walls.

Occasionally a colonnade was placed on either side of the central wall,
giving the effect of two stoas back to back. Much more commonly rooms
were built behind the colonnade, to serve as offices, dining-rooms for
officials, or shops. The uses of the stoas cover the whole range of Greek
political, religious and social life; and the same stoa might be used for
different purposes at different times. In the case of the largest political
and religious gatherings, including theatre audiences, the main activities
would take place in the open and an attached stoa would be used as
occasion arose. But a sufficiently spacious stoa could be the regular
meeting-place of a court or council. Seats were sometimes built along the
foot of the walls and rows of wooden benches could be added. Even
stoas which were used for such augiist purposes were available between
times as leschai , for casual social needs, for sitting and strolling and
talking. And if the talker was a Zeno, the nucleus of a school might be
formed. Some eccentrics more or less took up residence. Diogenes the
Cynic, according to his namesake (vi.2.22), pointing to the Stoa of Zeus
said ‘The Athenians have provided me with somewhere to live.’

In the above account ‘stoa’ has been assumed to mean an independent

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196 8A CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

free-standing colonnade. This is its usual meaning in ancient authors and
it is probably best to confine oneself to this. But the name is occasionally
applied to a colonnade attached to a major structure. Taking the widest
significance, one might properly say that Greek architecture is decidedly
‘stoic’ in character, if the adjective had not been appropriated by those
who set up their school in the most famous of all stoas.

Greek architects were not well equipped to provide roofed halls for
very large assemblies. All they could do was to extend the principle of the
two- or three-aisled stoa, introducing row upon row of columns,
obstructive to movement and vision. The Telesterion or hall of
initiation at Eleusis, repeatedly enlarged in the sixth and fifth centuries,
was a building of this type; and so was the Odeum of Pericles (Fig. 19).
The most ingenious and successful example was the Thersilium at
Megalopolis in Arcadia, which had room for ten thousand; but this was
not built till after 371 b.c. In due course the theatre came to be used for
political as well as festal gatherings. The Greeks in our period had no
equivalent of the basilica. Law courts met in stoas and other buildings
not designed for the purpose or in an unroofed enclosure. A council of
several hundreds could meet in a spacious stoa; but a fairly satisfactory
bouleuterion or council house was devised by placing a small theatre-like
arrangement within a rectangular hall which needed only four or five
supports for the roof. We find this type already in the fifth century at
Athens (Fig. 27), but it reached full development in the Hellenistic
period. 12

The theatre of Sophocles and even Euripides was still not a work of
fine architecture but a simple adaptation of a suitable site (Fig. 19). 13 It
consisted of three parts, the orchestra, the flat dancing-place - and
acting-place; the theatron proper, the auditorium, normally provided by
shaping a convenient adjoining slope; and, facing it across the orchestra,
the skene, whose name, meaning ‘tent’ or ‘booth’, betokens its essential
simplicity. All three elements even in the latter part of the fifth century
were somewhat rudimentary and makeshift in form; only in the fourth
were they given a truly monumental character and combined into an
effective architectural whole. In the fifth century the orchestra was of
hard earth — stone paving comes much later; in the auditorium ikria,
wooden benches on wooden uprights, were used, though the provision
of stone seating was begun; and the skene was a simple and adaptable
structure mainly of timber. There may have been a low wooden platform
for the use of the actors when dramatically desirable, but nothing like the
later proskenion, a high stone-built structure. Renewed investigation in

12 McDonald 1943 (1 100).

13 Hammond 1972(1 73); cf. Taplin 1977(1 162) appendixes Band C. For a controversial view see
Anti 1947 (1 2) and Anti and Poiacco 1969 (1 3).

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’97

Fig. 19. Athens, the theatre of Dionysus and Odeum, late fifth century b.c. (After Travlos 1971 (1
> 71 ) 3 8 9. 54°-)

the theatre of Dionysus at Athens 14 in recent years has led Greek
archaeologists to conclude that the first massive stone scene-building
was not erected till the fourth century, at the same time as the later temple
of Dionysus, of whose shrine the theatre was a huge appendage. It must
be freely admitted that the history of the theatre throughout is full of
doubts and problems; in particular, under repeated elaborate reconstruc-
tions it is extremely difficult to discern the form of the theatre in its earlier
periods. At present we can only attempt to assess its place in the scheme
of the city. Even though architecturally undeveloped, a great theatre, on
a fine site, ingeniously adapted to hold an audience of many thousands,
would still be one of the city’s most impressive features.

Any place provided for people to watch a spectacle was called theatron.
The stadium was a greatly elongated version of the type, such that the
athletes could run a stade in a straight line; it was even slower than the
theatre in achieving a fully built-up form. To the end the great stadium at
Olympia consisted of simple embankments with stone seating for only a
few. At Athens Lycurgus reconstructed the stadium in the fourth
century, but one hardly imagines that even he provided seating on the
scale later provided by Herodes Atticus.

Being of such great length the stadium was normally located along
with the cemeteries in the suburbs of the city or on the fringe. So were
the gymnasia, which were originally extensive athletic and military
training grounds, used in course of time for more academic pursuits. A
gymnasium was commonly attached to the shrine of a local deity or hero
14 Kalligas 1963 (1 86); Travlos 1971 (1 171) 537-9.

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198 8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

and contained shrines of Hermes and other appropriate deities. It usually
acquired stoas, a simple bath-house and a palaestra or wrestling-ground.
These last two elements could also exist independently — Athens is said
to have had many palaestras by the end of the fifth century, used by
sophists and other teachers as well as athletes. From the fourth century
we find gymnastic buildings in the form of a handsome colonnaded court
with rooms attached, and a simple version of this arrangement may have
existed earlier.

Aristotle tells us that the city wall should be an ornament as well as a
defence {Pol. vii.io.8). Of course the two things were not separate. A
fine-looking wall was a crowning element in the architecture of the city;
at the same dme it was a deterrent to an attacker even before its strength
was put to the test.

By the fifth century nearly all cities had an outer fortification, not
merely an acropolis, citadel or strong point. An old acropolis might still
form part of the defences, as an inner line or bastion. It was not
indispensable, however, and a new town might have no distinct
acropolis; but a dominant hill might be included in the defences to give
them greater strength and prevent an attacker from occupying it. On
some sites there was an acropolis in the sense of ‘high town’, even
though it was not a separately fortified citadel. Outlying defences were
sometimes provided in the shape of border forts, watch towers or
cross-walls.

The building of the city wall was the biggest job which a city had to
undertake. Athens and other cities had boards of teicbopoioi who were
responsible . 15 Architects were appointed and work entrusted in sections
to numerous contractors. Constant maintenance and repair was needed
and improvements from time to time to keep pace with advances in
methods of siege and assault. This process continued energetically in the
fourth century and reached its climax in the Hellenistic period.

In this as in other things the Greek architects were glad to let nature
build for them, and in planning the line went out of their way to take
advantage of natural strength. Thus large areas not required for
habitation or public purposes were sometimes included. The system of
defence in the fifth century remained simple, with towers, curtain walls
between, and fortified gates. Important gates were planned as dipyla,
with an inner and outer opening, a small court between and towers at the
corners. Complicated outworks were not employed in the fifth century.
The highly elaborate defence-works at the eastern tip of the wall at
Syracuse and a similar structure on the north at Selinus, formerly
attributed to Dionysius of Syracuse, are now thought to be still later . 16

15 Inscriptions provide much interesting evidence; see Maier 1959 (1 101).

16 Lawrence 1946 (1 94) and 1979 (1 96) s.v. index.

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0 10 20 30m

« I I I

Fig. 20. Houses at Olynthus, fourth century b.c. (After Robinson et al. 1929-46 (1 141) vm
(1938) pi. 94.)

Only the finest walls were built of well-shaped masonry throughout.
More often there was a massive rubble core, embedded in clay. The total
width varied considerably on either side of 3 metres. Unbaked brick was
still often used for the upper parts of city walls; it was quite satisfactory
provided that the stone socle was high enough to prevent attackers from
reaching it easily with picks.

The style of the masonry varies and does not provide a precise
criterion for date. Polygonal masonry is still sometimes found in the fifth
century. Roughly shaped stone (i.e., not merely in the core) indicates that
the wall is of lesser importance, or hastily constructed, rather than that it
is very early. Ashlar masonry, perfectly rectangular and well-smoothed
on the face, was not entirely suitable for fortifications. A style which was
favoured because while it had an elegance of its own, it gave the
appearance of rugged strength, is what is called ‘trapezoidal’; in this the
upper and lower edges of the great blocks are horizontal, but the sides
depart noticeably from the vertical, giving an effect somewhere between
polygonal and ashlar. The face of the blocks is commonly ‘rusticated’ -
left somewhat rough, though shaped with care, or decorated with simple
grooves and striations. In some walls the upper part is treated with
greater precision than the socle.

On many sites these great walls seem to be an appropriate extension of
the rock on which they stand; on some they are the only immediately
visible evidence that a city once stood here.

In no department of our subject has the available material increased so
greatly during the last half century as in the study of classical Greek
houses. Most notably, at Olynthus during the 1930s a large part of the
town was excavated, including numerous residential blocks in which the
plans of individual houses were clearly preserved (Fig. zo). Except that
they conform to a strictly rectangular street plan, one may reasonably

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

regard these as fairly typical of the houses of moderately well-to-do
Greek citizens in this period. Each is about 1 8 m square and built round a
small courtyard normally set in the southern part. There might be a
simple colonnade on one or more sides but nothing comparable with the
monumental peristyles of Hellenistic Delos. An entrance porch led into
the courtyard. The space of the colonnade on the north side of the court
was often extended across almost the whole width of the house, forming
what was called a pastas, on to which opened the main rooms. In spite of
the strict regularity of general plan, the arrangement of the rooms in
individual houses varied endlessly. The principal room was the men’s
dining-room or andron, which can sometimes be identified by its layout,
with plastered floor and a raised border — most floors were of hard clay.
Though the evidence is slight, we can assume that most houses had an
upper storey. The material was stone for the lower walls and unbaked
brick for the rest; and of course timber for upper floor, roof and pillars,
and terracotta for tiles.

This solid block of evidence is now supplemented by more scrappy
material from other sites, notably Athens itself, mainly on the fringes of
the Agora region, and from scattered sites in Attica. The Athenian
houses were not, of course, uniform in size and they were apt to be
irregular in outline since the Athenian streets were highly irregular; but
in mode of construction and in general character they are similar to those
of Olynthus.

There were simple houses at Athens and no doubt at other cities,
consisting of no more than two or three rooms huddled together. At the
other end of the scale, the house of the wealthy Callias must have been
better than any we know from remains; colonnades in the courtyard
could accommodate sophistic seminars, as we see in Plato’s Protagoras.

The old idea that the builders of the Parthenon lived in domestic
squalor is not now tenable. Thucydides (11.65.2) tells us that some
Athenians had comparatively costly establishments in the country. Two
substantial farmhouses have recently been excavated, one between Mt
Aigaleos and Mt Parnes to the north west, one at Vari in southern Attica
(Fig. 21). 17 The former is of the late fifth century, the latter of the fourth.
They are solid rectangular structures, not being subject to the vagaries of
town streets. They are indeed more spacious than most town houses, but
with no suggestion of architectural luxury. The basic plan is the same,
with a courtyard of larger dimensions towards the south side and the
principal rooms opening on it through a colonnade on the north.

The common house-type could be adapted for various purposes, as
inn, school or factory. The Prytaneum was essentially a large house with
accommodation for official dining and the cult of Hestia, goddess of the

17 Jones et al. 1962 (i 84) and 1973 (r 83).

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

Fig. 22. Houses west of the Areopagus at Athens. (After Boersma 1970 (1 23) 253.)

hearth. 18 Here again we do not find buildings specially designed for their
purpose. We now have a good example of industrial quarters at Thoricus
and elsewhere in southern Attica, where the processes of silver-working
were carried out, 19 besides the houses of marble- and bronze-workers on
the streets leading from the Agora at Athens.

The better grade of house in the late fifth century was not without
architectural character, but this would be apparent mainly in the interior.
The house presented a plain unadorned face to the street, with perhaps a
simple entrance porch. The ordinary streets of Athens (Fig. 22) and no
doubt of many old cities were notoriously narrow, mean and dirty.
Surfaces were of hard earth, which might be fortified by layers of gravel.
Stone paving was only used at particular points for some special
purpose. Drainage and sanitation were primitive; the well-built and
efficient stone drain which took the effluents of the Agora region at
Athens to the Eridanus stream was exceptional. 20

Domestic water was provided mainly by wells and by cisterns,
commonly bottle-shaped, which collected the rain. Fountain-houses
were constructed in public places, with spouts and cisterns, sometimes
adorned and protected by a columnar fajade (Pis. to Vol. rv, pi. 195 ); 21
these were fed by springs usually on or near the spot, rarely by long pipe-
lines, still less by imposing aqueducts.

Finally we must consider the art of city-planning. Though we now
know that its origins stretch far back into the Archaic period, and to the
western cities as well as Ionia, we can still believe that Miletus, and in
particular Hippodamus, played an important part. At Miletus itself
traces of rectangular planning have now been found in the pre-Persian
city. Of Hippodamus we are told more than of most Greek architects —

18 Miller 1978 (1 1 1 3).

19 Musschc et al. 1963— (i 117) and 1974 (i 1 16); cf. Jones 1973 (1 82).

20 Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 194-7.

21 B. Dunkley classifies types in BSA 36 (1935-6) 142-204; cf. Wycherley 1962 (1 184) 198-209;
Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 197—203.

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CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES 203

he was a man of striking personality, with notable views on things
political as well as architectural; yet we cannot precisely define his
contribution to the art of poleodomike. Aristotle’s statement (Pol. n. 5 ) that
he ‘discovered the division [diairesis] of cities’ is not literally true.
Another word which is used of his work is perhaps more significant —
nemesis, allocation. We can probably assume that he improved methods
of working out a plan and adapting it to the contours, and determining
sites for the different elements. Orientation, size of blocks, width of
streets and so forth had to be taken into account; but above all the city
had to be given that quality of kosmos which made it a convenient place to
live in and which in Greek eyes gave it beauty.

Hippodamus is associated with four cities which are of importance for
our subject, Miletus, Piraeus, Thurii and Rhodes. There is no need to
take Rhodes from him on the grounds of extreme old age; octogenarians
have done great work in many fields. One may assume that he was born
early in the fifth century and that in his youth he saw the rebirth of
Miletus and was no doubt moved and inspired by the way in which a plan
was created for the growth of a great city, with ample provision for all its
elements, notably the Agora, even though centuries rather than decades
would be needed for its full realization. ‘He cut up Piraeus,’ says
Aristotle, presumably meaning that he produced a plan for the whole
peninsula. We may assume that he did this job in the 450s, when he was in
his thirties, under Pericles. He was commemorated at Piraeus in the
name of the Agora, Hippodameia. The evidence for the plan of the
harbour town is extremely scrappy; there are traces of rectangular
streets, but not with the same orientation throughout the whole
complicated site. 22 In 443 Hippodamus went to Italy with the colonists
who founded Thurii and, though we are not told so, it is natural to
assume that he took an active part in planning the new city. Diodorus
tells us (xii. 10 ) that is had three streets running one way, four the other;
and this can be assumed to mean main streets, with lesser streets
between.

Before proceeding to Rhodes, we may take a brief look at Olynthus in
northern Greece, which, in the latter part of the fifth century, expanded
enormously. The old town, on the south hill, was irregular, with two
streets converging towards the northern tip of the hill and others
running across. The new town occupied a much more spacious plateau
to the north, with an extension on the lower ground to the east. Its
rectangular plan represents a complete regularization of the informal
arrangement which we noted on the southern hill. Long ‘avenues’ ran
north to south, of which one was given added width at the expense of
neighbouring houses. Numerous cross streets then divided the area into

22 Judeich 1931 (1 85)430-56; Wycherley 1976(10 1 129S.V. Peiraeus) and 1978 (1 187) 261—6.

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8 b. CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES

Fig. 2$. Plan of Classical Rhodes. (After G. Constantinopoulos, AAA i (1970) 55, fig. 1.)

long blocks, each occupied by ten houses divided into two rows of five
by very narrow alleys, which probably only served for drainage.

Rhodes provides a climax. In 408 the three ancient cities of the island
decided to build a federal capital. They had a superb site (Fig. 23), a
challenge for any architect, on the peninsula at the northern tip of the
island. ‘The city was founded’, says Strabo (xiv.2.9), ‘by the same
architect as Piraeus’; and this probably means that the Rhodians brought
in the venerable Hippodamus to provide a master plan. 23 Though
remains are very scrappy, the overall plan has been largely recovered by
adding to their evidence that of the medieval walls and streets and
extensive features revealed in air photographs. A single unified street
plan was applied to the whole peninsula, and excavation, though limited,

23 Abandoning the view given in 1962 (i 184) 17,1 put the case forgiving Rhodes to Hippodamus
in 1964 (1 1 8 5); Bums 1976 (1 4 1), in a very good assessment of the work of Hippodamus, concurs, as
does McCredie 1971 (1 99). For further bibliography, notably the important work of J. R. Kondis
and G. Constantinopoulos, see 1 129, 758.

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CLASSICAL CITIES AND SANCTUARIES 20J

has shown that certain streets were given additional width. The Agora
was probably near the main harbour, the central of three, on the east side,
where foundations of a temple of Aphrodite have been found. From this
the ground rises gradually to west and south west, giving a theatre-like
effect, till it culminates in a plateau on the western side of the peninsula.
The stadium was effectively placed on the eastern scarp of this hill, with a
gymnasium nearby; and the theatre must have been in the same area too,
though only a small odeum of Roman type has been found. Temples
were splendidly placed on the ridge above, looking over the town.
Finally a magnificent wall, of whose foundations bits have been found
here and there, surrounded the whole; this, as usual in planned Greek
cities, took a course independent of the rectangular plan in accordance
with natural features. Thus it contrasts curiously with the massive
fortifications of the Knights of St John, long stretches of which take the
line of ancient streets.

We need not doubt that the basic plan under which this great
development took place was that of Hippodamus. Though the extant
remains are mainly of later date, it is very unlikely that there were two
successive plans and that the original was abandoned and obliterated.

We still know far too little of fifth-century poleodomike to speak in
terms of general principles. Rectangular planning was normal, but there
was room for freedom and imagination in its application for each site.
Hippodamus is still an elusive figure. Perhaps we shall do him some
justice if we think of him as Capability Flippodamus. He defined the
possibilities of sites. He pointed the way and took the first steps towards
the creation of the most beautiful city in the world (Strabo xiv.2.5, p.
652).

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CHAPTER 8r

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

R. E. WYCHERLEY

When the Persians had withdrawn, the Athenians returned to find their
city mostly in ruins. Rebuilding and new building during the rest of the
fifth century fall into three phases, though these are not entirely distinct
(Fig. 24). In the earlier years, concern was mainly with housing and
defence. There must have been much refurbishing of shrines and public
buildings; the erection of major temples had to wait. Several important
but modest public buildings were undertaken, notably the Tholos and
the Stoa Poikile. Whatever is the truth about the ‘oath of Plataea’ (see
p. 206), by which the Greeks are said to have sworn not to rebuild the
shrines destroyed by the Persians, peace with Persia (440 b.c.) seems to
have led to the phase of far more ambitious temple building at Athens,
including the great programme of Pericles. Already in the 440s there are
signs that the Athenians had undertaken more than their resources
would permit; in the next decade with the inevitable onset of war the
difficulties increased. Yet even after the outbreak of war in 431 the
impetus was not wholly lost, and the architectural achievements of the
troubled decades of the late fifth century, though not on the scale of the
Parthenon, are varied and considerable. The work cannot have been
confined to the years of uneasy peace following 421, though these no
doubt provided occasion for the revival of activity and the completion of
abandoned work. One obvious difficulty in years of invasion or
occupation of Attica would be transport from the quarries.

For the most part we can only give general historical circumstances.
Even at Athens precise dates and contexts are often difficult to determine
and open to dispute and revision. Most of the leading figures of the
century were concerned in some way with building. 1 But when a
particular person is mentioned in such a connexion it is not always clear
what part he played. He may have provided general inspiration and
guidance, as Pericles undoubtedly did; he may have made a proposal in
the Assembly, sometimes acting on behalf of a major statesman; he may
have contributed money from his own resources. Through committees

1 Especially Boersma 1970 (1 23), Even the Persian sack does not provide such a clear and agreed
dividing line as one used to think.

206

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207

and contracts many others were involved, and through Council and
Assembly the whole people.

After 479 the Athenians might have built a largely new city, perhaps at
Piraeus. This would probably have been to the liking of Themistocles -
‘He thought Piraeus more useful than the upper city,’ says Thucydides
(1.93.7). Instead they restored the old city of Athens without any radical
change of character. In the end they had it both ways; continuing to
develop Piraeus as harbour town, they made it a complete duplicate astj,
planned on modern Hippodamian lines.

Inevitably the first concern would be the roofs over their heads. We
have already noted examples of the houses they built. The streets of the
old town remained, with a few special exceptions, narrow and irregular.
Travlos computes that there may have been some 6,000 houses within
the main city wall. 2

The provision of defences was almost as urgent. Thucydides describes
how the Athenians threw up their walls in great haste, in fear and
defiance of the Lacedaemonians, incorporating gravestones and other

2 Travlos i960 (1 1 70) 72. On the extent of the walls see ibid. 47-8 and 1971 (1 171) 158-61. New
sections, constantly coming to light, arc reported annually in Arch. Dell.

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2o8 8^. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

Fig. z;. Athens, Piraeus and the Long Walls. (After Boersma 1970 (1 23) 157.)

miscellaneous material. In spite of this, the walls were powerful enough,
constructed in the technique described above, with unbaked brick on a
stone socle. ‘The peribolos [circuit] was extended in all directions,’ says
Thucydides (1.93.2); this implies an early outer city wall, but because of
the lack of archaeological remains the very existence of this is still
disputed. By contrast, the line of the Themistoclean wall can now be
determined with great precision. It enclosed a large area on all sides of
the Acropolis, taking in some outlying communities or suburbs. There
were over a dozen gates; the main entrance, the great Dipylon or double
gate on the north west, took its characteristic form at this time, and some
other important gates were similar but simpler. The fortification of
Piraeus, begun earlier by Themistocles, proceeded more deliberately;
but though Thucydides says that the wall was built of stone masonry
throughout, the scanty remains show that this was so only in certain
sections. Lastly, towards the middle of the century, the two circuits were
joined into a great defensive system by the Long Walls (Fig. 25). First,
two legs were built, one running west-south-west to Piraeus, the other
south west to Phalerum. A third, closely parallel to the first, was added
later.

What happened on the Acropolis in the earlier phase is not clear. It is
commonly believed that in place of the great archaic temple of Athena a

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA 209

simple makeshift shrine — cella or treasury — was contrived; full
reparation was not made till late in the century. On the more southerly
site, where the Parthenon was to stand, work on a large Doric temple
was rudely interrupted by the Persians and probably not renewed on a
big scale till after the middle of the century. 3 Architectural members
from the temples badly damaged by the Persians were incorporated in
the reconstructed north wall of the Acropolis to serve as a kind of
memorial of the destruction. From about 460 the western part of the hill
was dominated by Phidias’ colossal bronze Athena Promachos.

On the site of Athens’ largest temple, the Olympieum to the south
east, construction had been abandoned after the fall of the tyrants, partly
because the project was associated with their hated names, and partly, we
can imagine, because it was too grandiose for the resources of the city.
Great column drums, intended for the temple, were built into the
Themistoclean city wall near by. The cult was carried on of course, and
we have to assume some makeshift arrangement; it was to be several
centuries before large-scale construction was resumed and completed,
under royal and imperial patronage.

In the Agora the altar of the Twelve Gods (CAH iv 2 296) continued
to be a main focus of religious life, but it was not given a handsome new
form till late in the century. The temples on the west side, of Apollo
Patroos and the Mother of the Gods, were not replaced by new shrines
till much later, even though Calamis produced a notable new statue for
Apollo and Phidias for the Mother.

A curious example of the deisidaimonia of the Athenians, their
scrupulous piety in small matters as in great, can be seen in the middle of
the Agora. On this spot the cult of an unnamed hero must have existed
from an early date. Now the miscellaneous small offerings were carefully
gathered together and placed in a receptacle specially prepared for the
purpose, a circular pit constructed of reused blocks. 4

Some distance west of the Agora, on the street leading to the Piraeus
Gate, remains of a shrine were found a few years ago, consisting of a
temple and an altar in an enclosure. An inscription shows that it
belonged to Artemis, and it is a reasonable assumption that it is the
shrine of Artemis Aristoboule (giver of best counsel), founded by
Themistocles near his house in the deme Melite (Fig. 26). The temple is
very simple and small, a square cella with projecting side walls forming a
porch. The remains belong chiefly to what appears to be a fourth-century

3 Carpenter 1970(1 4 2) has a building phase under Cimon. Bundgaard 1976(1 36) ch. 8 makes the
predecessor of the Periclean Parthenon post-Persian. Neither of these ideas has won much support.
Cf. also Knell 1979 (1 90) 6— 1 1.

4 Thompson 1958 (1 163) 1 48—5 3. For this and comparable features see Thompson and
Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 199-21.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

2 10

8 <T. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

Fig. 26. Sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule, Athens. (After Travlos 1971 (1 171) 122, fig.
164.)

reconstruction. No doubt Themistocles would think of the shrine as a
kind of victory monument; Plutarch {Them. 22.1) says that the people
were offended by his presumption in founding it himself. 5

In various ways the Athenians celebrated their great victories in
monumental fashion. The prompt replacement of the statues of Harmo-
dius and Aristogeiton, which the Persians had carried off from the
Agora, by a new pair made by Critius and Nesiotes, may be seen in this
light {Pis. to Vol. iv, pi. 1 41). Cimon, besides restoring the shrine of
Theseus, after defeating the Persians at Ei'on in Thrace in 476/5,
dedicated three Herms in a stoa {Aisch. 111.183— 5; above, pp. 41-2). 6
Nothing has been found of this building, but there is reason to believe
that it stood on the north side of the Agora, in the same region as the
much more famous and splendid Poikile or Painted Porch. To this a
number of architectural fragments have been attributed, and recently a
little of the foundation has been found and identified with probability. 7
The stoa has been dated about 460 b.c., and this would agree with our
knowledge of the artists concerned. It also bore the name Peisianakteios,
after one Peisianax, an associate of Cimon, connected with the building
in some way which we cannot define. Pausanias (1.1 5) describes the great

5 Threpsiades and Vanderpool 1965 (1 f 68); Amandry 1967 (1 1).

6 For this elusive monument see Threpsiades and Vanderpool 1963 (1 167); Wycherley 1957 (1
182) 103-8; Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 9 4—6.

7 H. A. Thompson, Hesperia 19 (1950) 20—35; Meritt 1970 (1 109); Thompson and Wycherley
1972 (1 166) 90-4; T. L. Shear, Hesperia 53 (1984) 5—19.

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

21 I

paintings — a contemporary battle of Athenians and Lacedaemonians
at Oenoe in Argive territory (above, p. 117 n. 77); Theseus and the
Amazons; the capture of Troy; and, most famous of all. Marathon. The
arrangement of the pictures, which were probably painted on boards
affixed to the walls, is disputed. The most notable artists of the day were
employed, Micon for the Amazons, Polygnotus, the greatest of all, for
T roy, and Polygnotus or Panaenus or Micon — our authorities differ — for
Marathon. Standing in the Agora, readily visible to all, the paintings
were amongst the most renowned and conspicuous sights of Athens.
The stoa played a great and varied part in the life of the city. It served as
picture gallery, lesche (lounge for meeting and talking), occasionally law
court, eventually philosophical seminar. In it was an altar — we do not
know of what deity. Most public buildings had religious associations
and housed some cult or other.

In the time of Cimon and even Pericles the official buildings,
concentrated in the Agora, remained architecturally unpretentious (Fig.
27). In the sixth and early fifth centuries the Athenians had endeavoured
to make modest provision for the instruments of government, especially
in the time of Cleisthenes. One may assume that some of the old
buildings were refurbished and continued in use, notably the basileios, a
stoa of modest size and basic type, with interior columns, at the north
end of the west side, used by the archon who retained the title of basileus,
king, and for the display of copies of laws inscribed on stone; and the
‘Old Bouleuterion’ or Council House, a square hall towards the south
end of the west side, spacious enough to hold the Council of Five
Hundred in a kind of covered theatre. Late in the fifth century a ‘New
Bouleuterion’ was added immediately to the west; and henceforth the
old building and the new between them must have accommodated the
Council, the archives, and the associated shrine of the Mother of the
Gods (see also above, pp. 79—80).

By contrast, the rambling old building like a large house at the south
corner, thought to have been occupied by officials and committees, was
replaced after a few years by a compact circular structure with a conical
roof and six interior supports; the irregular form of the old building was
still apparent in the shape of the precinct in which its successor stood. We
have here one monument whose identification is absolute and not
surmised; no one doubts that this was the Tholos or Skias, where the
prjtaneis , the committee of fifty, deliberated and dined, and official
weights and measures were kept. With it was associated a cult of
Artemis. The Tholos was at the very heart of Athenian life; and with
repeated refurbishing retained its peculiar and unexplained form
throughout antiquity.

Another pre-Persian building which long remained in being is the

Fig. 27. Plan of the Athenian Agora at the end of the fifth century b.c. Courtesy of the American
School of Classical Studies.

large well-built square enclosure at the west end of the south side, which
is very reasonably supposed to have been used by a principal law court.
The democratic courts were a dominant element in Athenian life in our
period, and one might have expected to find buildings specifically
designed and handsomely constructed in keeping with their dignity; but
in fact arrangements remained simple and even makeshift. Not only the
Poikile but even the Odeum or music-hall built under Pericles was
pressed into service. We hear in various contexts of what is called
perischionisma or the roping-off of a more or less suitable area . 8 In the
latter part of the century another rectangular enclosure, less solid in
construction, shown to have been a law court by the discovery of

8 Wycherley 1957 (f 182) 165-4; Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 34, 50, 87, 130, 159.

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

213

forensic paraphernalia in a room attached to it, was built in the north-
eastern sector of the Agora. This, and another added to it later, were to
be replaced in the fourth century - perhaps in the time of Lycurgus, who
devoted much attention to the architectural improvement of various
public buildings — by a large peristyle court. Simplicity of form and lack
of a specific design make it more difficult to recognize the remains of law
courts even when they are unearthed.

The ecclesia continued to meet in a kind of primitive theatre on the
slope of the Pnyx hill to the south west of the Agora. Towards the end of
the fifth century, surprisingly, the auditorium was reconstructed by
means of an embankment with a slope which ran contrary to the natural
contours. The Assembly clung to this spot and, except for particular
occasions, it was to be long before they fully realized the advantages of
meeting in the theatre of Dionysus.

The old South-east Fountain House, a rectangular building with
basins at either end and columns in the middle section of the north side,
continued to provide the main supply of water for the Agora area. 9 It was
not till early in the fourth century that it was supplemented by the
architecturally more impressive South-west Fountain House, with an L-
shaped columnar facade, fed by the same underground aqueduct which
brought water from sources to the east of the city.

In the time of Pericles the Agora was still a spacious open square, with
buildings of modest character loosely distributed along the edges. In the
latter part of the century two large stoas were built on the west and south
sides; but they were quite different from one another and did not go far
towards giving the Agora any unity or completeness of plan.

The long south stoa had a double Doric colonnade and a row of rooms
behind. It was built of limestone, with unbaked brick, of which a little
has survived, in the upper part of the walls. There is evidence that the
rooms were designed as offices and dining-rooms for some of the
numerous boards of magistrates. Till we come to this building, magis-
trates’ offices too are difficult to identify, since they have no readily
recognizable characteristics. Two buildings to the south west of the
Agora, dated in the middle of the fifth century, both comprise a long
quadrilateral with a courtyard at one end and a row of rooms on either
side of a corridor at the other. One has been very tentatively called
strategion and assigned to the board of ten generals; the other too was at
one time thought to contain magistrates’ offices, but on various evidence
a good case has now been made for making it the desmoterion or jail, the
scene of Plato’s Phaedo (Fig. 28). 10

9 This may be the elusive Enneakrounos; see Travlos 1971 (1 1 71) 204; Thompson and Wycherley
1972 (1 166) 198-9.

10 E. Vanderpool, Illustrated London News) une 1976; Wycherley 1978 (1 187) 46-7 (here note also
the Mint, south east of the Agora).

214

8 f. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

Fig. 28. The ‘Prison of Socrates’, south west of the Agora, Athens,
teconstruction by J. E. Jones. (After Wycherley 1978(1 187) fig. 16.)

In the stoa towards the north end of the western side of the Agora,
identified as belonging to the shrine of Zeus Eleutherios or Soter, god of
Freedom or Saviour, the architect’s aim was obviously to produce
something architecturally superior to a straight colonnade, and he did it,
as we have seen, by adding temple-like wings (Fig. 29). The outer order
was Doric, the inner Ionic. The materials used were nicely varied -
limestone of a harder and a softer kind in the foundations; brown
Aeginetan limestone for the walls and for the triglyphs; Pentelic marble
for the rest of the fa£ade and for the inner columns; both Pentelic and the
darker Hymettian in the steps. Fine marble Victories were used as
acroteria on the roof. This is one stoa which has something of the
architectural distinction of a great temple. Though he had many shrines
under many names in various parts of Athens and was honoured along
with his daughter on the Acropolis, while the Olympieum lay largely
derelict Zeus had no worthy temple. The embellishment of the stoa
offered some compensation. Pausanias (3.2) saw Zeus’s statue in front of
the building, where it had been joined by the generals Conon and
Timotheus and the emperor Hadrian. In the fourth century Euphranor
adorned the walls with paintings: of the Twelve Gods; of Theseus,
Democracy and Demos; and a battle of Athenian and Lacedaemonian
cavalry at Mantinea. Thus, though not built for the purpose, it came to
rival the Poikile as a picture gallery. In general function one may think of
it as a large extension of the basileios ; and in typical Athenian fashion the

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

215

_ ^ n 1 1 ntt firi m it nn f rrrrrr^ ± _

r* 1 ■ 1 111 1111 1 1 1 1 11 >imn 1 mi 1 11 mmimrLnii-o

Fig. 29. Restoration of the facade of the Stoa of Zeus, Athens. (After H. A. Thompson, Hesperia 6
(1937) 54, fig. 34; cf. Coulton 1976 (1 50) fig. 8.)

modest old building, with wings now added, continued to stand for
centuries beside the handsome new one.

But of course the glory of Athenian architecture was concentrated in
the creations of the Periclean building programme. By the middle of the
century the Athenians were devoting much thought to the building of
worthy shrines of the gods, which would at the same time be a visible
symbol of the achievements and the power of the city (Fig. 30). Actual
work on the Parthenon began in 447 b.c., and for sixteen years the
complicated processes of erecting the temple and giving it elaborate
sculptural adornment were a major concern. Each year resources were
allotted and progress and accounts were scrutinized.

Much preparatory work had already been done. Early in the century
the Athenians had planned and begun to build a large temple, similar to
the Parthenon but somewhat smaller and simpler. It was in this temple
that Pentelic marble was first used in huge quantities. With extension and
adjustment the massive foundations could still be used, and some
material from the super-structure could be incorporated. To enlarge the
flat summit area of the Acropolis, extensive terracing had been carried
out to the south, with retaining walls ranging from the ancient
Cyclopean wall to the ultimate fortification built in the time of Cimon.
For the Parthenon which we know, the guiding spirits were Pericles and
Phidias. With a number of technical assistants of course, Phidias made
the great gold and ivory statue of Athena which the temple was designed
to contain. Furthermore, ‘He managed everything for Pericles,’ says
Plutarch (Per. 12.3), ‘he was the overseer ( episkopos ) of everything, even
though the various works required great architects and artists.’ 11 How
much truth there is in this and just what it means we cannot say precisely;
at least we can be sure that Phidias gathered about him and directed a
school of first-rate sculptors. His relation to the three architects named
by our authorities, Ictinus, Callicrates, and one Carpion who is otherwise
unknown, cannot be clearly defined.

From inscriptions, supplemented by the evidence of the building
itself, we can give the stages by which the Parthenon came into being. As

11 Drerup 1981 (1 62) gives a synopsis of problems of old and new.

216 8o REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

Fig. 30. Plan of the Acropolis, Athens. (After Travlos 1971 (1 171) fig. 21.)

usual, the outer colonnades were built before the inner structure, though
presumably with gaps through which material could safely be taken.
Everything from steps and pavement to tiles, except for roof timbers,
cella - ceiling and doors, was of Pentelic stone. The metopes and the frieze
were carved on stones which were part of the fabric. The former were
carved on the ground, the latter possibly in their position, though this is
disputed. The metopes naturally came earliest and in them the perfection
and harmony which we see in the later elements has not been fully
attained. The cult statue was dedicated in 438/7, by which date the

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA 217

temple must have received its inner colonnades and roof; the pedimental
sculpture, free-standing statues though still intimately related to the
architectural setting, required another five years.

The plan speaks for itself. It is entirely regular and represents a
moderate elaboration of the basic form of the peripteral temple. It is
octastyle, with eight columns at either end; the inner Doric colonnade
was in two storeys and continued round the back of the statue; the rear
chamber, probably a treasury, opening onto the rear porch, contained
four tall Ionic columns.

The Parthenon illustrates in their most subtle form the refinements
which are found in the best Doric architecture and more rarely in Ionic —
the upward curve of horiaontal lines, the curve and inward tilt of column
shafts, the thickening of corner columns. These are so slight as to be
barely perceptible; but they enhance the beauty of the building; some
give it greater stability in appearance as in fact; the curvature of the
platform assists drainage. These features were thought worth while even
though they added greatly to the labour of the carving and laying of
many of the stones.

The approach to the Acropolis has always been from the west, and one
can assume that from time immemorial a propylon, a gate with a porch
inside and out, stood at this end. There are traces of such a gateway built
earlier in the fifth century with a distinctly different orientation from its
successor. 12 The great Propylaea which Mnesicles built for Pericles in the
430s, when the workforce of the Parthenon was free for other tasks, was
more than a simple entrance to the Acropolis. As the plural form of the
name suggests it was a complex building. The central element was still
essentially a propylon; but on either side of the main gateway, through
which the processional road ascended, were two doors reached by steps
— the inner porch was at a higher level. In the deep outer porch, behind
the fagade of six Doric columns, were three Ionic columns on either side
of the roadway. To the north-west corner a wing was attached, in the
form of a temple-like building facing south through a fagade of three
Doric columns. A similar fagade was built at the south-west corner,
facing north, but the structure behind it was much curtailed. The north-
west wing was eventually a pinakotheke or picture-gallery, though it may
have been intended for a dining-room. There is evidence in the stones
that wings on the north east and south east were planned in the form of
halls which might have served as store-rooms, but these were never
built. It is unlikely that there was ever any idea of adding elaborate
sculpture which might have competed with the Parthenon; but to the
east and to the west and in the interior stood a number of statues of great

12 Dinsmoor 1980(1 61) finds several building phases, the last ajttr 480 B.c.,and gives the plan as a
simpler version of the central Mnesiclean building. He gives a full bibliography of the Propylaea.

2 I 8

8c. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

religious and artistic importance. Old shrines clustered thickly on the
site, no doubt an embarrassment at times to the architects and planners.
Somewhere down below were sanctuaries of Aphrodite Pandemos (of all
the people), Ge Kourotrophos (nurturer of youth), and Demeter Chloe
(green) (Paus. 1.22). 13 On the bastion which jutted south-westward was
Athena Nike (victory), of whom we shall see more; and adjoining the
south-west wing were Hermes Propylaeus (with whom were associated
the Charites or Graces) and Hecate Epipyrgidia (on the tower), for both
of whom Alcamenes made famous statues. The way in which minor
shrines could cling to the great buildings like limpets is vividly
illustrated by the remains at the foot of the southernmost column of the
east porch, an altar and statue base of Athena Hygieia (health), who
cured a workman seriously injured during the construction of the
Propylaea. The ground to the south east was sacred to Artemis Brauro-
nia, and the shrine was embellished with a stoa facing north with a
rectangular hall at either end; the shrine of the goddess at Brauron itself
in southernmost Attica was given a comparable stoa.

The great Doric temple, which stands miraculously preserved on the
hill overlooking the Agora from the west, was under construction at the
same time as the Parthenon, probably in the middle 440s; there was,
however, a break of over twenty years before the sculpture and other
details were finally completed. Modern scholars have installed various
deities in this temple, but though the problem has not been settled
outright there is now general agreement that it is the Hephaesteum, in
which Hephaestus and Athena were worshipped together. An inscrip-
tion recording accounts from 421 to 41 5 b.c. is thought to refer to the
making and erection of their bronze statues, which were probably by
Alcamenes . 14 Above the lowest step, which like the foundation is of
limestone, the whole of the upper structure is of marble; except that most
of the sculpture and certain other details were of Parian, the stone was
Pentelic. Examination of the foundation has revealed that the inner
colonnade, which, probably in imitation of the Parthenon, was carried
across the east end of the cella, was an afterthought, not part of the
original plan. The sculptural decoration seems to be a curtailment of the
scheme which we see in the Parthenon; there were pedimental groups, of
which very little survives, metopes at the east end, supplemented by four
round the corner on the north side and four on the south; and friezes

13 The topography of the area is still very unclear and remains unidentifiable.

14 IG i 3 472. Harrison 1977 (1 74), in her reconstruction of the statues, maintains that Athena and
Hephaestus cannot have stood in the existing temple and that this was occupied by Eucleia (possibly
Artemis). Her theory rests on very disputable sculptural evidence, and is contradicted by Pausanias,
who places Eucleia south west of the Agora (1.14.5); ar *d not a trace of another temple has been
found. Brommer 1978 (i 28) gives a different reconstruction and keeps Athena and Hephaestus in
the existing temple.

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

2I 9

| F™

rwl

'• M

« SB

• —

Fig. 31. The temple by the Ilissusat Athens, elevation and plan. (After Travlos 1971 (1 171) 1 16,
fig. 156.)

over the front of the back porch of the inner structure, but not as in the
Parthenon along the sides. On a more modest scale than the Parthenon,
the Hephaesteum still gave a touch of architectural distinction to the
Agora. From their dominant site Athena and Hephaestus presided
directly over the life of the centre of their city. By contrast the spacious
city sanctuary of the Eleusinian deities, diagonally opposite on the slope
south east of the Agora, remained content with its simple pre-Persian
temple.

Doric was the dominant order in fifth-century Athens, but in the latter
part of the century Ionic was used to design buildings which offered a
wonderful contrast. Incidentally an Attic type of column-base was
developed, with a concave moulding between two convex. We find it in
the little temple built outside the city on the south bank of the river
Ilissus (Fig. 3 1). Although this was completely demolished by the Turks
to provide material for a fortification, by great good fortune we know
much more about it than about many which have left solid remains, since
Stuart and Revett, who examined it before the destruction, left a full
account with fine drawings. 15 It was amphiprostyle, with a columnar
fafade at both ends. To what deity it belonged is not clear, possibly the
Mother of the Gods, more probably Artemis Agrotera (huntress). A
very similar temple was built, probably in the 420s (but see above, p. 1 2 5
n. 21), in the old shrine of Athena Nike on the south-western bastion of
the Acropolis, now enlarged and reconstructed. The time was not
entirely appropriate for an offering to the goddess of victory, but a long-
standing debt was handsomely paid with a temple which on a small scale
is an example of Attic Ionic at its best. This too was amphiprostyle and
had sculpture in the pediments and not only on its own frieze but also on

15 Stuart and Rcvctt 1 762 (i 1 59) ch. 2. The temple has commonly been dated just after the middle
of the century and associated with IG i 3 3 5 (M-L 44), but some recent writers have disputed this and
brought the date down to the 420s. See Bocrsma 1970(1 23) 75; Picon 1978 (1 125); Miles 1980(1 1 1 1).
W. A. P. Childs supports the earlier date in Ath. Mitt. 100 (1985) 207-51.

2 20

8c. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

the outer face of the balustrade which was erected around the bastion.

Though they gave precedence to the Parthenon, we can assume that
the Athenians always intended to build, on the northern part of the
Acropolis, a direct replacement for the great archaic temple of Athena. It
says much for their piety, their resources and their persistence that in
troubled times they fulfilled this obligation so handsomely. The Erech-
theum was highly peculiar in plan, besides having different ground levels
in different parts. It was built of Pentelic marble, in the last two decades
of the fifth century. The eastern facade was normal, with six prostyle
Ionic columns, behind which was a broad cella. The western fafade
consisted of a low wall on which stood four columns in antis. This part of
the temple contained two cellas side by side behind a vestibule, but it is
doubtful whether this arrangement goes back to the original construc-
tion. A large columnar porch, facing northwards, was somewhat
awkwardly attached on the north-west corner; at the corresponding
point on the south was the small Caryatid porch, with female figures in
place of columns. Capitals, bases and other decorative elements were
elaborate and delicate; the frie2e which ran round the building was of
dark Eleusinian stone, with figures of white marble attached. Besides the
shrine and ancient statue of Athena Polias and the altar of Erechtheus
which has provided a convenient name, the temple contained a whole
series of altars and curious cult-spots; their distribution about the
complex building is conjectural . 16 Yet others occupied the ground to the
west — the grave of Cecrops, the altar of Zeus of the Hearth, the sacred
olive tree, the little temple of Pandrosus, and the house of the priestesses
known as Arrhephoroi. Religious complexity may account in part for
the exceptional form of the building, but we cannot know what was in
the minds of the architects.

The Acropolis was now crowned by three splendid buildings. Each
had its own independent character. The Parthenon was dominant, but
the Propylaea was something more than a mere prelude and the
Erechtheum provided a contrast and a foil. They rose above a great host
of sculptural monuments of many kinds; these stood in no particular
order, except that they tended to accumulate along the roads leading
eastward from the Propylaea in the direction of the temples and along the
north side of the Parthenon to its east end. On the south slope, adjacent
to the theatre, a shrine of Asclepius was added to the primitive shrines
towards the end of the fifth century, but did not receive a temple till the
fourth.

Temple building was by no means confined to the astj, the city proper.
Piraeus, as we have seen, was developing rapidly; the harbour town had

16 For the internal arrangements and a suggested distribution of the various shrines see Travlos
1971 (1 171) 213. Much uncertainty remains, however.

REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

221

many shrines, and some had temples, but we know very little about
them. Solid evidence of temple building comes from several country
demes, by a curiously devious route. By the Roman period a number of
temples in these districts had fallen into a state of dilapidation; from
several of them, architectural members were brought into the city for
reuse and some of these have been found in excavations. 17 One large
temple was completely transferred, block by block, each marked with
letters to ensure that it was correctly placed. This is the building which,
although it can be dated in the fifth century, stood eventually on
foundations of Augustan date in the middle of the Agora. Its place in
Pausanias’ account (1.8.4) leaves no doubt that it belonged to Ares, for
whom Alcamenes made the statue. In extreme contrast with the
Hephaesteum, the remains consist of scores of scattered blocks, but there
is enough to show that the temple was very similar in dimensions and
general plan. The material was Pentelic marble with a peculiar greenish
tinge - Pentelic was by no means entirely monotonous in character.
Where the temple originally stood is not known. It is very difficult to
find a site within the city, or a reason for the transference if that is where
it stood; a probable suggestion is that it came from Acharnae, north of
the city, which had a notable shrine of Ares.

Criteria of style in architecture are admittedly not so precise as in other
arts; but Dinsmoor detects in this building the work of the architect of
the Hephaesteum, and to the same hand he ascribes the temples of
Poseidon at Sunium and of Nemesis at Rhamnous in eastern Attica. 18
The former is the temple whose columns still crown the southern cape.
Pausanias (1.1.1) wrongly assigns it to Athena, but in fact the scanty
remains of this shrine lie some distance further north.

The temple of Poseidon was peripteral, six by thirteen like many
others and, like several others in this region, it was built of a milky white
marble, not so fine as Pentelic, peculiar to south Attica. Beneath it are
remains of a temple of the early fifth century, unfinished when it was
destroyed by the Persians. At Rhamnous too there was a pre-Persian
temple, a simple cella with Doric porch; but in this case the replacement, a
Doric peristyle of comparatively modest size, was built on a distinct site a
little further north; 19 another leading pupil of Phidias, Agoracritus,
made a notable cult statue of the goddess. Two other temples originally
built in south Attica in the fifth century provided material for building in
the city itself in Roman imperial times. Ionic elements from the temple of
Athena at Sunium, a building of unusual plan, with columns only along

17 Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 162—7.

18 Dinsmoor 1950 (1 60); c f. Wycherley 1978 (1 187) 69; Knell 1973 (1 89) distinguishes two
architects.

19 See now M. M. Miles, Hesperia 58 (1989) 155—249.

222

8<T. REBUILDING IN ATHENS AND ATTICA

the east front and south side, have been found in the southern part of the
Agora and assigned tentatively in their later use to the ‘south-west’
temple which may have housed an imperial cult. Doric columns from the
peripteral temple of Demeter and Kore at Thoricus were probably
incorporated in the facade of the ‘south-east’ temple, which was perhaps
dedicated to the same deities. The temple at Thoricus was never finished;
and it has been noted that in column drums from the Agora the fluting
has been begun at top and bottom with the meticulous care of a fifth-
century craftsman but completed somewhat carelessly, presumably by
his successors of the first century a.d.

To return to the city, in conclusion, on theatre, stadium and
gymnasium one can add hardly anything to what has been said in the
previous section, though they played a vital part in the life of the city,
especially in our period. The Odeum of Pericles formed an impressive
appendage to the theatre; the theatre itself remained structurally very
simple. ‘The Academy’, says Plutarch ( Cim . 13.8), ‘formerly waterless
and parched, he made a well-watered grove, equipped with clear running
tracks [ dromot] and shady walks’; he is speaking of Cimon, who also had
plane-trees planted in the Agora. The further architectural development
of all these elements belongs to a later time, the age of Lycurgus,
statesman, finance minister and tireless builder.

CHAPTER 8 d

PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC

POETS

N. J. RICHARDSON

I. THE PANHELLENIC FESTIVALS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C.

Many of the innumerable ancient Greek festivals included athletic and
cultural contests. By the fifth century b.c. a few of these gatherings had
achieved much more than a purely local prestige and significance. Pindar
and Bacchylides often give long catalogues of the victories of an athlete
or his family at places all over Greece, but Pindar distinguishes these
from the ‘common festivals’, where athletes ‘contested against all the
Greeks together’ ( Istbm . iv.30-1). 1 By this time, a special group of four
festivals had come to be distinguished from the rest, the Olympian,
Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean Games, and it is for victories at these that
the majority of our surviving epinician poems were composed. These
were known as ‘crown games’ ( stepbanitai ), because the prizes were not
objects of material value but simply crowns, at Olympia of wild olive, at
Delphi of bay, and at Nemea and Isthmia of fresh and dry celery
respectively (at least, in Pindar’s time). 2 Such crowns were given at some
other festivals, but at the majority prizes of greater utility were offered.

These four festivals were in origin very different in size and signifi-
cance from each other. The Olympic Games, which were held in honour
of Zeus, in the district of Pisa beside the river Alpheus, seem to have
acquired a wider importance quite early in the Archaic period. Since lists
of Olympic victors were kept from the first Olympiad in 776 b.c.
onward, they could later be used to provide a convenient chronological
framework for the entire Greek world. These games took place every
four years, in August or September, at the hottest and dustiest time of
year for both athletes and spectators. The original race was the stadion, a
sprint of approximately 200 metres, and other contests were added
gradually during the following centuries. 3 There was a tradition (Phi-
lostr., De Gjmnastica 5) that originally the athletes ran to the altar of
Zeus, and the victor kindled the flame on the altar for the sacrifice (cf.
also Schol. Pind. 01 . 1.149c). If this is true, it shows very clearly the

1 For Pindar’s lists and the festivals he mentions, see Kramer 1970 (k 52) 3-6}.

2 On Isthmian crowns see Broneer 1962 (k 8) 259-63.

* For a convenient list see Bengtson 1972 (k 3) 35-6.

22 3

224 %d. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

religious purpose of the earliest form of the festival. It is now known
from archaeology that until the stadium was rebuilt in the fourth century
b.c. it lay very much closer to the altar of Zeus, with its western end
open, and within the sacred enclosure. 4 The fact that it was later rebuilt
outside the sanctuary proper suggests that the old religious ties had been
loosened by that time, but in Pindar’s day they were still strongly felt (cf.
Pis. to Vol. hi, pi. 304 (/>)).

The Pythian Games at Delphi began as a purely musical event. The
original contest was said to have consisted simply in the singing of a
hymn to Apollo. After the First Sacred War, in the early sixth century
b.c., the festival was reorganized by the Amphictyonic League, with the
addition of further musical competitions, and subsequently of athletic
contests. These games also took place every four years, in late August in
the third year of each Olympiad, and the Pythiads were reckoned from
582 b.c. 5 Because of the prestige of Delphi they ranked second in
importance after Olympia in the Classical period.

The Isthmian and Nemean Games also took their classical form in the
early sixth century, the Isthmian probably in 582, the Nemean in 573.
Both were held every two years, in April or May and in J uly respectively.
The Isthmian Games were administered by Corinth, and were probably
reorganized on their new scale after the fall of the Cypselids. They were
in honour of Poseidon, and owed their popularity to Corinth’s position
as a meeting-place for mainland Greece, and as a flourishing port. The
Nemean festival, in honour of Zeus, was officially controlled by Cleonae,
but its earliest foundation was linked in legend with the expedition of the
Seven against Thebes, led by Adrastus of Argos, and Argos probably
had a hand in its organization. It may have been intended to rival the
activity of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, who had banned the cult of Adrastus,
and who had helped to reorganize the Pythian Games. 6 There was a
similar rivalry between Olympia and Corinth in the tradition that no
Elean was allowed to compete at the Isthmus (Plut. Mor. 400 E; Paus.
v.2.2). This exclusion was said to date from the time when the Eleans had
refused to erase the names of the Cypselids from their offerings at
Olympia, after the fall of the dynasty.

Although the early history of the Nemean festival is obscure, it seems
likely that Argos exercised some kind of general influence over the
sanctuary throughout this period, rather than taking control of Cleonae
and Nemea around 460 b.c., 7 or after the destruction of the temple of
Zeus, at the end of the fifth century. 8 Already in 468 we hear of Mycenae

4 Cf. Mallwitz 1972 (1 102) 180-6, Romano 1981 (1 144) 116—41; Pis. to Vol . nr, pi. 304.

5 Cf. Gas par 1900^41) iff. Fora recent, unconvincing attempt to argue for 5 86 as the date of the
first Pythiad see Miller 1978 (k 62) 127—58.

6 McGregor 1941 (k 59) 277-8, Jeffery 1976 (a 69) 137.

7 Cf. Bolte 1922 (f 8) 726 with references ad loc.

8 Cf. Miller 1977 (1 1 1 5) 9-10, 1981 (1 1 1 5) 51-2, with references to earlier reports.

THE PANHEUENIC FESTIVALS 22 j

claiming against Argos the right of sole control of the games (Diod.
xi. 65. 2), and this seems to imply some form of Argive control at this
period.

It is clear from inscriptions, and from the order in which Pindar lists
the festivals in his victory catalogues, that the Isthmian Games ranked as
more important than the Nemean. 9 But throughout the Classical period
both these festivals attracted competitors from a less wide area than the
other two sanctuaries.

The gods in whose honour these festivals were held were panhellenic
deities, and in gathering at their sanctuaries the Greeks felt very strongly
the bonds of a common religion and culture. Only those of pure Greek
birth could compete in the games in the Classical period. A sacred truce,
which extended over the whole Greek world, prevailed for a period
before, during, and after these festivals. This was not strictly speaking an
armistice, but was probably designed in the first place to guarantee safe
conduct to those visiting the festivals. 10 But by the fifth century b.c.
Olympia’s role as a panhellenic sanctuary came to assume a much greater
significance, especially in the period after the Persian Wars. It had
already come to be used as a place for debate between cities when a
dispute arose, for arbitration, and for the publication of treaties. It
became also a place where orators, philosophers and literary men could
display their talents, by speeches or recitation of their works. It was said
that Herodotus read parts of his history here, in the opisthodomos of the
temple of Zeus (Lucian, Herod. 1). Gorgias appealed for unity against
Persia here in 408, and Lysias and Isocrates composed speeches for
delivery at Olympia in the early fourth century. Cities also dedicated war
trophies here, as they did at Delphi. This, however, may have had a
divisive rather than a unifying effect, if the defeated enemy were fellow-
Greeks, as was often the case. The temple of Zeus itself is said by
Pausanias (v.10.2) to have been built by the Eleans from the spoils of a
war with their neighbours. One must beware of equating religious and
cultural unity with political cohesion, which was always a very fragile
reality for the Greeks at the best of times. Nevertheless, it is clear that
they did see Olympia as representing an idea of this kind. As Lysias says
when praising Heracles for his legendary foundation of the Olympic
Games: ‘he thought that this gathering would become for the Greeks the
origin of their mutual friendship’ (xxxm.z). Certainly from a religious
point of view Olympia came to be seen as the Greek sanctuary par
excellence. Phidias’ great statue of Zeus represented for many the most
impressive embodiment in visual form of the Greek idea of divinity, and

9 IG * 3 13 1.12, i 2 606, 829 ( = 1 3 893, 1022), n 2 3128, Thummer 1969 (j 104) 11. 1 1 5. At some stage
in transmission the books of Isthmian and Nemean odes must have been transposed in the collection
of Pindar’s epinicians: cf. Irigoin 1952 (j 5 5) 100.

10 Rougemont 1973 (k 79) 75—106.

226 PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

Olympia’s supremacy is most memorably expressed by Pindar, at the
opening of Olympian i (3-7):

But if to sing of contests
You long, dear heart.

Look no further for another star
Shining by day through the barren ether
Warmer than the sun: nor shall we tell
Of any gathering mightier than Olympia.

Although Delphi never achieved the same reputation as Olympia for
political neutrality, as the ‘navel of the earth’ it could claim to be in
another sense the religious centre of Greece, and as the chief oracular
sanctuary in the Classical period it also exercised a powerful political
influence. Our view of the Pythian Games at this period depends largely
on Pindar’s Pythian odes, and Pindar’s own special connexions with
Apollo and Delphi are evident. No other deity is portrayed so vividly
and sympathetically in his poetry. But, although this may reflect Pindar’s
personal bias as a poet, we can gain through him a view of Delphi as a
focus for the cultural ideals of Greece, which is surely also an expression
of what many Greeks of this time must have felt.

The poems of Pindar and Bacchylides demonstrate in another import-
ant way the unifying force of these great festivals, in that so many of
them were composed for Sicilian patrons. The Persian Wars and their
aftermath coincided with a serious threat to the Greeks in Italy and Sicily
from the attacks of the Etruscans and Carthaginians. Pindar’s first
Pythian expresses most clearly the sense of an urgent need for unity
between Greeks of the motherland and their western colonies. The
Sicilian tyrants were at the height of their power and wealth at this time,
and their victories at Olympia and Delphi were an essential medium for
increasing their prestige. The rivalry with which they competed in these
contests, and also in enriching the sanctuaries with treasuries and other
splendid monuments, must have helped to give the Greeks a greater
sense of unity in the face of external dangers.

II. THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE GAMES

Nowadays competitions of any kind take place in a purely secular
setting, and the idea of connecting sport with religion seems particularly
odd. There is a sense of ceremony and of a contrast with everyday life,
but usually no more than that.

For the Greeks, however, the religious context was essential. The
competitions formed part of the festivals in honour of gods and heroes.

THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE GAMES

227

The gods themselves took pleasure in contests, and to compete at a god’s
sanctuary was a special way of honouring him. The poet of the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo , in his vivid description of the Delian festival, reminds
Apollo of how all the Ionians ‘give you pleasure as they commemorate
you with boxing, dancing and singing, whenever they institute your
festival’ (149-50). Lucian describes the gods as ‘overseers of the games’
( Pro Imag. 19). As the Phaeacians in the Odyssey hold special contests to
entertain Odysseus, and Achilles in the Iliad institutes funeral games to
honour his dead companion Patroclus, so the games of the historical
period were celebrated against an imagined background of divine and
heroic spectators.

But the gods were not merely detached observers. They could also
favour individual competitors. The Greeks viewed life in general very
much in competitive or ‘agonistic’ terms, and all success was a divine
gift. We see them in action in the Iliad, both in war and also in war’s
image, in the contests of Book xxm. Plutarch calls Greek athletics an
‘imitation and preparation for war’ ( Mor . 639 DE), although by his time
athletic and military training diverged (cf. Plut. Philopoemen 3.2—4). As
Pindar says to the victor Arcesilas, king of Cyrene:

Forget not, while you are sung of
In Aphrodite’s sweet garden at Cyrene,

To set God as the cause
Over all things. (Pytb. v.23-5)

Many athletic festivals were believed to have been originally instituted
to commemorate the death of a legendary figure of the past. In fact, the
ancient commentators on Pindar state that all ancient games were
originally of this character (Schol. Pind. Isthm. init.). At Olympia the
games were in honour of Pelops and commemorated his victory in the
chariot race with king Oenomaus of Pisa, by which he won the king’s
daughter Hippodameia as his wife (Pind. 01 . r. 67-88). But they were also
said to have been founded by Heracles, and Pindar gives a list of the
victors on this first occasion when they were held ( 01 . x. 24-77). One
tradition ascribed to Heracles the foundation of the Nemean Games, too,
after he had killed the Nemean lion (Schol. Pind. Nem. init.). But the
usual version was that they were in memory of the child Opheltes, who
was killed by a snake at Nemea when Adrastus’ army stopped there on
the way to attack Thebes. Likewise, the Isthmian Games commemorated
the death of the child Melicertes (or Palaemon), son of Ino. The Pythian
Games, although not in honour of a hero, could also be described as
funeral games, as they marked Apollo’s killing of the serpent Python.

We have already seen that the original race at Olympia was a religious

228 8 d. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

event, being run to the great altar of Zeus, where the chief sacrifice of the
festival took place. This altar stood near the precinct of Pelops and the
temple of Hera, which existed long before the temple of Zeus was built.
These religious landmarks formed the central cult area of the sanctuary.
In Olympian i (yotf) Pindar speaks of the honours paid to Pelops at his
tomb, beside the altar of Zeus, and of the contests which are held in their
honour nearby.

Likewise at Isthmia one can still see the starting lines of the stadium
that was used in the Archaic and Classical periods (Pis. to Vol. iv, pi.
203). These lie right next to the later sanctuary of Palaemon, and near the
temple of Poseidon. 11 It has also recently been suggested that the earliest
stadium at Nemea lay quite near the temple of Zeus, unlike the later one. 12

In addition to the heroes in whose honour the games were held, there
were others who could be associated specifically with these contests. The
great model for all athletic achievement (but especially for boxing,
wrestling and the pankration) was Heracles, whose own exploits ( athla )
had, in Greek belief of the late Archaic and Classical periods, earned him
a place among the gods. 13 But the Dioscuri were also patrons of athletes,
Castor specifically of horsemen and Polydeuces of boxers, and they too
had their alternating shares of immortality. Pindar is also fond of
mentioning the athletic and other exploits of Iolaus, the nephew and
companion of Heracles, who shared a festival with Heracles at Thebes. 14

More generally, the achievements of living athletes are seen by the
epinician poets in the context of both the recent historical past and also
the remoter past of legends. The heroes whom they mention were often
worshipped by the athletes’ communities, or regarded as their ancestors.
For Pindar and Bacchylides past and present are inseparable, and the
present only has meaning in the light of the past. It is not really possible
in these poets to separate history from mythology, and for this reason it
is misleading to speak of their use of myths, as if these were extraneous to
the main subject matter of their poems. The historical event which they
celebrate has greater significance by virtue of its relationship with the
heroic age when men and gods were on closer terms. Living athletes in
turn come closer to divine status as a result of their god-given success.
This is confirmed most dramatically by the numerous legends which
rapidly sprang up about the supernatural exploits and deaths of famous
athletes of the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., and the fact that some of
them were actually worshipped as heroes after death. 15

11 Cf. Broneer 1973 (1 31), csp. 46-66, 137—42, and Romano 1981 (1 144) 53—70. P/s. to Vol. /v, pi.
203. 12 Cf. Romano 1977(1 143) 27-3 1. See also Miller 1983 (1 115)80-2.

13 Kramer 1970 (k 52) 108-38.

14 01 . ix.98— 9; Pyth. rx. 79-83, xi. 55-61; Nem. 111.36-9; hthm. 1.14— 32, v.32-3, vn.9.

15 Cf. Fontenrose 1968 (k 30) 73-104, Harris 1964 (k 36) no#, Pouilloux 1954 (f 58) 1.62-105.

THE ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FESTIVALS 229

III. THE ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FESTIVALS 16

i. Olympia

The Olympic festival lasted for five days in the fifth century b.c. (Pind.
01 . v.6). It was held in the month Parthenios or Apollonios, at the full
moon, once every forty-nine or fifty months, and was preceded by a
sacred truce of a month. The centrepiece of the ceremonies was the
sacrifice of a hecatomb on the altar of Zeus, which was itself composed of
ash from the vicdms (Paus. v. 13.8). The exact order of the athletic events
is not known for certain. According to Pausanias (v.9.3), up to 472 the
equestrian contests were held on the same day as the other events, but
thereafter the pentathlon (running, jumping, discus, javelin and wres-
tling) and horse-races took place before the sacrifice, and the other
contests after it (cf. also Xen. Hell, vn.4.29). The boys’ contests preceded
the men’s (Plut. Mor. 639 A), the foot-races were all on the same day, and
the wrestling, boxing and pankration were also on the same day (Paus.
vi. 6. 5, 13.3, 15.4). The last event was the race in armour.

At the end of the sixth century the list of contests was as follows:
stadion (single lap foot-race), diaulos (double lap), dolichos (long race),
pentathlon, wrestling, boxing, pankration, boys’ foot-race, boys’ wres-
tling, boys’ boxing, race in armour, four-horse chariot-race, horse-race.
To these were added the mule chariot- race in 500 and the mares’ race in
496, but both of these were discontinued in 444. In 408 a two-horse
chariot-race was introduced.

The contests were preceded by a procession from Elis to Olympia, and
a ceremony at which athletes and officials swore an oath to observe the
rules of the games, and they were followed by victory celebrations, with
processions and banquets.

The overall control of the festival was in the hands of a board of Elean
judges. The number of these was increased from one to two in 5 80 b.c.
(Paus. v.9.4), and some time later, probably during the fifth century, it
was raised to nine, and soon after to ten. (The dates in Pausanias are
unfortunately corrupt.) In inscriptions from before the Persian Wars
these judges are called diaitateres. In 476, however, Pindar uses the term
hellanodikas ( 01 . 111.12; cf. Inschr. v. Olympia No. 2 = Jeffery 1961 (c 137)
220 No. 1 5 , 475—50 b.c.); and Pausanias also refers to them as hellanodikai
when speaking of the change to nine (v.9. 5 ). It is possible that the name
was introduced at this time in recognition of the increased national
prestige of the games. 17

The judges exercised a strict disciplinary authority over the athletes,

16 Cf. Gardiner 1910 (k 33) 194-226, Bengtson 1972 (k 3) 32-56.

17 Cf., however, Hellanicus, FGrH 4 f 1 13, Arist. fr. 492.

230 8 d. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

and had power to impose heavy fines for breaches of the rules. An
unpublished inscription of the late sixth or early fifth century mentions
offences, in particular the breaking of fingers in a wrestling match, and
also bribery. Punishments include beating, provided that this is not on
the head, and fines are mentioned. It is notable that offenders are called
mianteres (defilers), a word which again reminds one of the religious
character of the occasion. There is also mention of ‘the Eleans and their
alliance’, and this suggests that Olympia may already have been
controlled by a league of Elean communities at this period.

The main changes at Olympia during the fifth century are linked to the
political development of Elis. 18 After the Persian Wars the Eleans, who
had arrived too late to fight in the battle of Plataea, banished their
oligarchic leaders (Hdt. ix.77). The scattered communities of Elis were
then concentrated in a newly founded city of Elis (Diod. xi.54.1, Str.
viii. 3 .2, p. 3 36). This city was designed with special consideration for the
preparations for the festival at Olympia, with spacious training-grounds
for horses, several gymnasia, and the headquarters of the hellanodikai
(Paus. vi. 23-4). After a war in which they gained control over some of
their neighbours (cf. Hdt. iv.148, Str. vm.3.30, p. 35 5), the Eleans built
the temple of Zeus at Olympia. This is thought to have been finished
soon after 457 (cf. Paus. v. 10.4). It was some time before the temple
housed the great statue of Zeus by Phidias, which was not finished until
the 420s. Phidias’ workshop, and some of the materials and tools which
he used when working on the statue, have been found at Olympia. 19

Towards the middle of the fifth century a new stadium was built,
which replaced the previous one of the mid-sixth century. This was in
use until some time in the fourth century, when the surviving stadium
was constructed. This lay for the first time outside the bounds of the
Aids, the sacred enclosure proper. 20

During the Peloponnesian War the Olympic Games continued to be
held. Elis at first sided with Sparta, and in 428 the Mytilenaeans
presented their case against Athens to the Peloponnesian alliance at
Olympia, after the festival (Thuc. m.8ff). But a dispute with Sparta over
the Elean control of Lepreum led to the formation of an alliance between
Elis and Argos in 421, and the next year the Eleans and Argives allied
themselves with Athens (Thuc. v.31, 47). At the games of 420 the
Spartans were forbidden to compete or sacrifice, because they had not
paid the fine imposed by the Eleans for an alleged breach of the Olympic
truce, and the festival was conducted in the presence of a garrison for fear

18 Cf. Swoboda 1905 (f 67) 2392-2401 and Honle 1968 (f 34).

19 Cf. Mallwitz 1972 (1 102) 211—34, 235-66, Herrmann 1972 (k 40) 128—57.

20 Cf. Mallwitz 1972 (1 102) 1 80-6, Herrmann 1972 (k 40) 105 ff, 1 59, 164-5, Romano 198 1 (1 144)
116—41, and Koenigs in Mallwitz 1981 (1 103) 366-8.

THE ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FESTIVALS

231

of a Spartan attack. The Spartan Lichas, the wealthiest man in Sparta,
was also beaten by the Olympic officials for ignoring the regulation
debarring the Spartans from taking part (Thuc. v.49— 50).

After the battle of Mantinea, Elis seems to have adopted a neutral
position. But at the end of the war Sparta took her revenge. Elis was
invaded by Agis, defeated, and forced to give up her dependent
territories. However, she was allowed to retain control of the adminis-
tration of the Olympic festival (Xen. Hell, m.2.21-31).

2. Pythia

The Pythian Games were held in the Delphic month Boukatios
(August— September), under the control of the Hieromnemones, who were
the twenty-four representatives chosen by the twelve peoples of the
Amphictyonic League to run its affairs. In addition to looking after the
upkeep of the sanctuary, the Hieromnemones were responsible for the
proclamation of the sacred truce and the general administration of the
festival. 21 The musical contests always remained important, and con-
sisted in those for singing to the cithara, cithara-playing and flute-
playing (Paus. x.7.2-4; cf. Pind. Pyth. xir). The athletic contests were
similar to those at Olympia, with the addition of a diaulos and dolichos for
boys. The race in armour was added in 498. The horse-races were always
held in the plain of Crisa below Delphi. It has recently been argued on
archaeological grounds that the existing stadium was not built before the
late fourth or early third century b.c., and that before this date the
athletic events were also held in the plain. 22 The temple of Apollo whose
ruins can now be seen was built in the fourth century b.c. to replace the
one built in the late sixth century and completed by the Alcmaeonids (cf.
Pind. Pyth. vn.7-9). The gymnasium and palaestra are situated near the
temple of Athena Pronaia and date from the late fourth century. 23

7. Isthmia

The Isthmian Games included the usual athletic and equestrian contests.
Chariot- and horse-races were especially prominent here, perhaps
because of Poseidon’s patronage of horses. There was also a special foot-
race of four laps called the hippios, which was not run at Olympia, and
there were by the fifth century b.c. separate competitions for youths as
well as men and boys. Musical contests are not attested before the third
century. The temple of Poseidon was built around the middle of the fifth

21 Cf. Roux 1979 (f 60) 57-8.

22 Cf. Aupert 1979 (1 8), esp. 17-31, 52-4, 1 64— 5 , 180. See also Miller 1981 (1 114) 504—6 for
criticisms. 23 Cf. Courby 1927 (1 53), and Jannoray 1953 (1 80).

23 2 8*/. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

century, and replaced an earlier temple of the seventh century. The early
stadium nearby was replaced by one outside the sanctuary, probably in
the late fourth century or thereafter. 24

4. Nemea

The Nemean Games took place on the twelfth day of the Nemean month
Panemos, under the control of officials known as the hellanodikai , who
wore dark robes to commemorate the legendary funereal origin of the
festival. The main attraction seems to have been the athletic contests,
although there was also a chariot-race. The origin of the pankration is
traced by Bacchylides to Heracles’ victory over the Nemean lion
(xni.46— 5 7). There was a hippios race, as at Isthmia, and many events for
boys and youths. The boys’ pentathlon was not introduced until the fifth
century b.c. (Schol. Pind. Nem. vri init.). The stadium, which has
recently been excavated, dates from the second half of the fourth century
b.c. 25 But a block which appears to come from the starting-line of an
earlier stadium was built into the threshold of a later building near the
temple of Zeus (above, n. 12). The earliest temple was probably built in
the sixth century. It was destroyed at the end of the fifth, and rebuilt only
in the later fourth century. 26 Nine buildings of the early fifth century
have been discovered, which appear to be treasuries as at Olympia and
Delphi, and also what is thought to be the temenos of a hero, which may
perhaps be the sanctuary of Opheltes (cf. Paus. 11.15.3). 27

IV. THE ATHLETES: BACKGROUND AND CAREERS

The late sixth and fifth centuries were a golden age for Greek athletes.
This was the time when aristocrats and tyrants vied for the most coveted
prizes, those in the chariot- and horse-races, and our picture of athletes in
general at this period is very much influenced by the wealthy patrons for
whom Pindar and Bacchylides wrote many of their poems. But, contrary
to what is often believed, athletic success was by no means confined to
the wealthy amateur at this time. 28 By the fifth century there were enough
festivals to keep an athlete perpetually busy, and those who were
successful from an early age could devote a large part of their lives to
training and competition, and probably also look forward to a prosper-

24 Cf. Broneer 1971 (1 30) and 1973 (1 31) 46-66.

25 Cf. Miller 1975 (1 1 1 5) 169—72, 1976 (1 1 1 5) 193-202, 1977 (1 1 1 5) 22-6, 1978 (1 1 1 5) 84-8, 1979
(1 115)93-103, 1980 (1 1 15) 198-203, 1981 (1 1 1 5) 65-7, 1982 (1 1 1 5) 36-7; and Romano 1981 (1 144)
71— 1 14.

26 Cf. Hill 1966 (1 75) and Miller (above, n. 25).

27 Cf. Miller 1978 (1 1 15) 67-78, 1979 (1 115) 83-5, 1981 (1 1 1 5) 60-5.

28 Cf. Young 1984 (k 91). See also Kyle 1987 (k 56) 102 ff.

THE ATHLETES

233

ous retirement. We already hear of a number of famous athletes in this
period who came from humble backgrounds, for example Glaucus of
Carystus, who was said to have been a ploughboy, and whose success as a
boxer earned him the praise of the poet Simonides (fr. 509 PMG), or the
runner Polymestor of Miletus, in the early sixth century, who was said to
be a goatherd, or the cowherd Amesinas in the fifth century. 29 We are
told that Alcibiades avoided entering for other events at Olympia, apart
from the chariot-race, because ‘he knew that some of the athletes were of
low birth, came from small towns, and were of poor education’ (Isocr.
x vi . 3 3 4).

To get some idea of the number of festivals available throughout
Greece, one need only consider the extraordinary career of Theogenes of
Thasos, in the early fifth century. He was said to have won over 1,300
athletic victories, and never to have been defeated at boxing during a
career of twenty-two years. Apart from his success as a boxer, he had a
number of victories in the pankration, and also won the long-distance
race at Argos and at Phthia in Thessaly. 30

One should also take account of the scale of prizes at some of the
games, and of other rewards to athletes by their home cities. At Athens,
victors in the Panathenaea received amphorae of olive oil as prizes (cf.
Pis. to Vol. iv, pis. 204--5). An inscription of the fourth century b.c. lists
these prizes. The largest, for the winner of the chariot- race, was 140
amphorae ( IG n 2 231 1.5 5—6), and those for some of the other athletic
contests were also considerable (e.g. probably 100 amphorae for the
winner of the stadion). An amphora of olive oil was worth at least 12
drachmae at this time, and probably considerably more than this, and the
daily wage of a skilled workman was only about 1— drachmae. This
gives some idea of the scale of such prizes in financial terms.

Although the crown games did not offer such material rewards,
athletes could expect these on their return home. By the time of Solon
such rewards seem to have been already considerable at Athens, as he is
said to have restricted the amounts given to victors at Olympia and
Isthmia to 500 and 100 drachmae respectively (Plut. Solon. 23.3, D.L.
1.5 5). Plutarch (/or. r//.)also informs us that at this time 5 00 drachmae was
the equivalent of the annual yield from the estate of the top Solonian
property class, the pentakosiomedimnoi.

The sixth-century poet and philosopher Xenophanes pours scorn on
the honours and rewards given to Olympic victors, saying that their
achievements really were of no value to their communities by contrast
with his own intellectual contribution (fr. 2 IEG). 3i He fists these

29 Cf. Moretti 1957 (k 64), nos. 154, 79, 261.

30 Cf. Pouilloux 1954 (f 58)62-105; Harris 1964 (k 36) 115-16.

31 Cf. Bowra 1953 (j 6) 15—37, Marcovich 1978 (j 77) 16—26.

234 id. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

rewards as a seat of honour at festivals (proedria ), meals at public expense
(i.e. oiTTjcns ev npvTavel(p), and expensive gifts, and these practices are
confirmed by later evidence. 32 Criticisms like those of Xenophanes also
recur later, most notably in a speech from Euripides’ Autolycus (fr. 282
n 2 ). 33 But there were other honours which Xenophanes does not
mention: the statues of athletes, with which Greek sanctuaries and public
places began to be crowded from the sixth century onwards; 34 the public
inscriptions recording their exploits, and in the case of rulers the issues of
coins struck to commemorate their equestrian victories (Pis. to Vol. iv,
pi. 214); the celebrations, often very extravagant, both after victory and
on their return home, when they were escorted in a grandiose triumphal
procession by their fellow citizens, and thanksgiving was offered to local
gods and heroes; the victory songs themselves; and finally the fact,
already mentioned, that some athletes came to be regarded as heroes, and
worshipped after death.

Such extravagant honours, and the resentment and criticism which
they aroused, should be borne in mind when we read the frequent
references in Pindar and Bacchylides to the risk of envy (phthonos ) to
which the successful athlete was always vulnerable. When Pindar
solemnly warns his patrons that they have reached the limits of success
available to men, we should take his words at face value. Pythagoras was
said to have advised men to compete at Olympia, but not to win, because
of the danger of envy (Porph. VP 1 5 ); and in a famous comparison of life
to the Olympic Games he said that athletes were like men possessed by a
desire for rule and leadership, and by a mad lust for glory (Iambi. VP
58).

Political and athletic ambitions were, in fact, often inseparable. There
is a story that Glaucus of Carystus ended his life as governor of Camarina
in Sicily (Schol. Aeschin. In Ctes. 190, Bakker Anecd. Gr. 1.232). 35
Another famous athlete, Phayllus of Croton, was the only representative
of the western Greeks to send aid to the battle of Salamis, and he came
with his own ship (Hdt. vm.47). We do not know whether or not he was
wealthy by birth: like Glaucus he may have risen to prominence by his
athletic prowess.

A salient example of the political use of athletic success is provided by
Alcibiades. In the debate at Athens about whether to mount an
expedition against Sicily, he defended his credentials as an advocate of
this project and a potential leader by claiming that he had brought
exceptional honour to Athens through his personal success at the
Olympic Games in 416 b.c. He had entered seven chariots, and had been

32 For fifth-century Athens, cf. Bowra 1953 0 6) 30-4, and IC i 3 151.1 1-18, PI .Ap. 36d.

33 Cf. also Finley and Pleket 1976 (k 29) 1 13—32.

34 Cf. Gardiner 1910 (k 35) 70, 77, 86ff. 35 Dunbabin 1948 (a 29) 416.

THE ATHLETES

235

placed first, second and fourth, a unique achievement. This in his view
had led the rest of Greece to have a far higher opinion of Athens’ power,
instead of supposing her to have been ruined by the expenses of the war
(Thuc. vi. 16). Thucydides himself comments that Alcibiades’ expendi-
ture on his race-horses had really overstrained his resources, and he was
hoping to recoup his fortunes in Sicily. His ostentation was, in fact, a
chief cause of popular mistrust of his ambitions and of the fear that he
was aiming at tyranny, which led to his later expulsion from Athenian
politics (Thuc. vi. 1 5. 3— 4).

It is significant that at Sparta the only king who had ever won a victory
in the chariot-race at Olympia, down to Herodotus’ time, was the
renegade Demaratus, who ended his life as an exile in Persia (Hdt. vi.70).
The Spartans feared such successes. 36

Horses and chariots were a heritage from the epic age of heroes.
Cimon, son of Stesagoras, who was winner of the Olympic chariot-race
three times in the late sixth century, and was killed by the sons of
Pisistratus, was buried together with his victorious horses (Hdt. vi. 103).
This reminds one of the funeral of Patroclus, and of the horse-burials of
the Mycenaean and Geometric periods. Race-horses were usually ridden
by professional jockeys, but a wealthy owner, or one of his family, could
drive his own chariot (cf. Pind. Pyth. v, Isthm. 1 and perhaps Pyth. vi).
Cimon is also a good example of the political use of these contests, since
he allowed Pisistratus to be proclaimed as victor on the second occasion
when he won, and was then permitted to return from exile (Hdt. loc. cit.).

After the equestrian contests, we can possibly get some idea of the
popularity of other events by considering the order in which Pindar’s
poems were arranged by the Hellenistic scholar Aristophanes of Byzan-
tium. Boxing, wrestling, pankration and pentathlon are placed next, and
after them the foot-races. Boxing, wrestling and pankration were always
favourite sports. They were all very demanding, and one could even be
killed in these contests. The most brutal, to our view, was the pankration ,
which has been called ‘unarmed combat converted into a scientific
sport’. 37 It was perhaps rather like a combination of wrestling and
boxing, in which only biting and gouging were forbidden (cf. Pis. to Vol.
iv, pi. 208). Yet as many as eight odes of Pindar celebrate pankratiasts,
and Philostratus called it ‘the fairest of all contests’ ( Imag . 11.6).

One of the leading themes of Pindar’s poetry is that of the inheritance
of natural ability from one generation to another. In fact, athletic success
did tend to run in families in ancient Greece. 38 An outstanding example
in the fifth century was the family of Diagoras of Rhodes, the subject of
Olympian vii, which celebrates his boxing victory of 464. His three sons

36 Cf. Bowra 1953 (j 6) 25-6, but sec also Plut. L yc. 22.4, and de Ste Croix 1972 (g 36) 354-5.

37 Cf. Harris 1964 (k 56) 106. 36 Harris 1964 (k 36).

236 8 d . panhellenic cults and panhellenic poets

and two of his grandsons all won victories at Olympia in boxing and the
pankration, and one of the sons, Dorieus, had a succession of triumphs at
all four major games as well as elsewhere. Dorieus also had a notable
political and military career. Exiled from Rhodes to Thurii in the
Peloponnesian War, he commanded a fleet against Athens in 410, was
captured and condemned to death, but was then spared because of his
athletic fame. Later, when Rhodes sided with Athens, Dorieus was
captured by the Spartans, who showed their lack of tolerance by putting
him to death.

Another family praised by Pindar was that of the Oligaethidae of
Corinth. In Olympian xiii, for Xenophon’s victories in the foot-race and
pentathlon in 464, Pindar says that they have already won sixty victories at
Isthmia and Nemea in the past (96—100), and he alludes to a host of
successes at other festivals throughout the Greek world (1—2, 1 3—14, 29-
46, 1 01 — 1 3). 39

Epinician odes sometimes include compliments not only to the
athletes and their families, but also to their trainers. 40 By the fifth century
training was already a specialized and professional affair, which went
with the development of theories about diet and health. One tradition
connected the concentration on a meat diet for athletes with Pythagoras
(D.L. viii. 1 2, Porph. VP 1 5), while another put this innovation later, in
the early fifth century (Paus. vi.7.10). By Euripides’ time the develop-
ment of such a regime had evoked the criticism of athletes as gluttons,
which later became a commonplace (Ath. 41 2D ff), and we find frequent
protests against athletic training as not conducive to a balanced state of
health (e.g. Hippoc. De Alimento 34, PI. Rep. 403e8ff). There was a saying
that training made athletes shine like the columns of the gymnasium but
it also made them as solid as the stone of which these were made (cf. Plut.
Mor. 133 d)!

These games were not open to women as competitors, although they
could enter chariots as owners in the men’s races at Olympia. Women
had their own athletic contests on other occasions. 41 At Olympia, for
example, unmarried girls ran races in the stadium at the ancient festival
of Hera (Paus. v. 16.1). Pausanias also tells us that at Olympia married
women were not even allowed to watch the games, with the exception of
the priestesses of Demeter Chamyne (vi.20.9, v.6.7). Some modern
scholars believe that this ban extended to unmarried girls also, but
Pausanias’ text states that they were allowed to be spectators, and Pindar
seems to envisage girls, probably at Cyrene, watching the contests which
he mentions at Pythian ix.97— 103.

39 Cf. Barrett 1978 (j 4) 1—20.

40 Cf. Harris 1964 (k 36) 170-8; Gardiner 1910 (k 33) 122-32; Kramer 1970 (k 52) 64-107.

41 Cf. Harris 1964 (k 36) 179—86.

POETS AND PATRONS

2 37

V. POETS AND PATRONS

The epicinian ode was a specialized variety of the hymn to a god or a
hero, and it was a late development in the history of Greek choral lyric
song. The first who is recorded as having composed such songs in praise
of athletic victors was Simonides of Ceos ( c . 557-468). Very few
fragments of these poems survive ( PMG 506— 19). 42 Simonides com-
posed these songs on commission and for payment, and he enjoyed the
patronage of several of the most powerful rulers of his time. Hipparchus
is said to have persuaded him to come to Athens by offering rich gifts and
fees, and he also spent some time in Thessaly, supported by the Aleuadae
and Scopadae. During the Persian Wars he was again at Athens, where
he was friendly with Themistocles, and he ended his life at the court of
Hieron of Syracuse. Simonides very quickly acquired a reputation for
greed and for a mercenary attitude to his art (cf. Xenophanes 21 bud— k 6 ,
Ar. Peace 697—9, Arist. R bet. 1 39ia8, 1405 b24, Callim. fr. 222, etc.). Such
an attitude is criticized by Pindar ( Isthm . 11.1— 11), and the ancient
commentators assume that he has Simonides in mind, but we do not
know if this is so. 43

There was a legend later that a victorious boxer refused to pay
Simonides the whole of his fee for a poem, telling him to ask the Dioscuri
for the rest, because he had spent so much of his song in praise of these
deities. At the victory feast they appeared at the door and asked to speak
to Simonides. When he came out they had disappeared, but the house
then collapsed, killing all inside ( PMG 510). This story does at least
suggest that Simonides was capable of devoting only a minor part of his
poem to direct praise of his patron. Some of the surviving fragments also
seem to show that he did not always adopt a very serious attitude
towards the occasion of the poem (507, 514, 515). Once, however, he
indulged in a remarkable hyperbole, when he said of Glaucus of Carystus
that ‘even the strength of Polydeuces would not have raised a fist against
him, nor the iron son of Alcmene’ (509). Again, he may not have been
entirely serious here!

This new type of praise poem was very rapidly developed into a highly
elaborate and complete art form by Simonides’ successors Pindar and
Bacchylides. Pindar is said to have been born in 5 18 b.c. at Cynoscepha-
lae in Boeotia (Suda s.v. IllvSapos, Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina, ed.
Drachmann, 1.1.1). 44 Of his seventeen books of poems only the four
books of the epinician odes survive, together with a larger number of
fragments of other types of poetry. We thus possess at least forty-four

42 Cf. Frankcl 197} (j 39) 434—6, and Bowra 1961 (j 8) 308-17. See also Barrett 1978 (j 4) 1-20.

43 Cf. Lefkowitz 1981 (j 63) 50- 3.

44 Cf. Lefkowitz 1981 (j 63) 57—66, 155-7 for traditions about Pindar’s life.

2 38 8 d . PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

complete poems of Pindar. The last book, containing the Isthmian odes,
is defective at the end. These poems are said by Eustathius to be ‘more
human, less mythological and less obscure than the rest’, and hence were
more popular in later antiquity ( Scholia Pindari , ed. Drachmann, 111.303—

9 _I 0 -

Pindar’s earliest surviving datable poem, Pythian x, was composed in
498 when he was only twenty, and his last, Pythian vm, over fifty years
later in 446. He wrote for patrons from many parts of the Greek world.
His longest poem, Pythian iv, is dedicated to Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, as
is Pythian v, but he wrote many poems for Sicilian patrons, especially
Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Acragas, and also a substantial
number for Aeginetan victors. The Olympian and Pythian odes are, for
the most part, securely dated by ancient records, whereas the Nemeans
and Isthmians are not.

Bacchylides of Iulis in Ceos was the nephew of Simonides. His exact
dates are uncertain, but he was composing in the same period as Pindar,
sometimes for the same patrons and in competition with him. 45 In his
fifth ode he celebrated Hieron’s success at Olympia in the horse-race of
476, the subject of Pindar’s first Olympian , and in the fourth Hieron’s
chariot victory of 470 at Delphi, the theme of Pindar’s first Pythian. The
third commemorates his chariot victory at Olympia of 468. As he calls
Hieron a (guest-friend) in Ode v(n) he had presumably already

visited him in Sicily by 476. Odes vi and vii, for Lachon of Ceos, are dated
to 45 2 by a papyrus fragment of the Olympic register (P. Oxy. 222.ii.18).
There was also a tradition that at some stage Bacchylides was exiled from
Ceos to the Peloponnese (Plut. Mor. 605 c).

Of Bacchylides’ work we possess the remains of at least fourteen
epinician odes and six dithyrambs, found in 1896 on two papyrus rolls,
together with a number of fragments of other poems.

Like Simonides these poets worked on commission, and they fre-
quently allude to the hospitality and generosity of their patrons. 46
Sometimes the poet himself was present at the performance of his work,
but he could also send a poem to be performed at the victor’s home.
Some of the shortest songs seem to have been intended to be sung at the
place where the victory was won (e.g. Ol. xi; Pyth. vi), but more often
they were performed after the athlete returned home, sometimes at the
door of his house (Nem. 1. ijff; Isthm. vm. iff) or at a temple {Pyth. xi. iff).
Although designed primarily for performance by a chorus of young

45 Cf. R. C. Jcbb, Hacchylidts (Cambridge, 1905) 1-26; Scveryns 1933 (j 98); Machler 1982 (j 75)
1.6-9.

46 On conditions of composition and performance of epinician poems, cf. Frankel 1975 (j 39)
429—33, and Bowra 1964 (j 9) 161—2.

THE POEMS

2 39

men, they could also be sung individually, for example by a member of
the victor’s family on later occasions ( Nem . iv. 13—16). The songs were
intended as artistic heirlooms for the family of the athlete, preserving his
memory for all time to come. A special copy might even be kept in a
temple in the victor’s city, as was said to have been done with Olympian
vii ( Scholia Pindari, ed. Drachmann, 1. 19 5.1 3-14).

Epinician poems regularly contain statements made in the first person
singular. 47 Since the time of the ancient commentators there has been
debate as to whether these refer to the poet himself, to the chorus who
are to sing the song, or even to the victor. Some instances can, however,
only refer to the poet (e.g. Pyth. 111.63—79), and in general one may
assume that this is the case, unless there are strong grounds for doubt.
The poet does not introduce himself merely for advertisement, but
rather to add authority to what he says. As the Muses’ spokesman (Pind.
Paean vi.6), he is entitled to a special respect, both in praising and in
giving advice. By alluding to his personal relations with his patron, or
the victor’s city, he also gives greater validity and immediacy to his
praise. Such personal references can be regarded as an epinician
convention, but this in no way detracts from the genuineness of what the
poet says of himself on such occasions.

About the musical aspects of these songs, or how they were danced,
little is known. There are frequent references to accompaniment by
either the lyre, or lyre and flutes together. The terms Dorian, Aeolian
and Lydian are sometimes used with reference to the song ( 01 . xiv.17;
Nem. viii. 1 5; probably Ol. 1.102), or the instrument ( 01 . 1.17, v.21; Pyth.
11.69; Nem. hi. 79), or the dance (Ol. 111.4-6; Pyth. vm.20); but the precise
meaning of these terms in such cases is uncertain. For dancing, we
possess some brief statements in late sources, according to which in
triadic songs the strophe was sung as the dancers circled in one direction,
the antistrophe as they circled in the opposite direction, and the epode while
they stood still. 48 We are also told that Greek dancing in general was
mimetic, expressing in its movements or poses character, emotion and
action (Arist. Poet. 1447327-8; PI. Leg. 653d; Plut. Mor. 747A-8D). But it
is hardly possible to reconstruct what this may have meant for epinician
song.

VI. THE POEMS

These epinician odes are composed in a literary language which
combines an overall colouring of Doric (the traditional dialect of choral

47 Cf. Lefkowitz 1963 (j 62) 177—253.

48 Cf. Farber 1936 (j 36) 11. 14-19; Mullen 1982 (j 80) 21—31, 225-30.

24 ° 8^. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

lyric poetry) with the language of epic, and also a number of Aeolic
features. 49 They are written in either Doric (what is now know as
dactylo-epitrite) or Aeolic metres, with the exception of Olympian xm,
which mixes Aeolic with dactylo-epitrite. 50 They are usually triadic in
structure, i.e. composed in groups of strophe , antistrophe and epode , but
occasionally monostrophic, with a single stanza repeated several times.
The shortest is only fourteen lines (Bacchyl. n), the longest 229 (Pind.
Pyth. iv). Modern texts use a different line-numbering system for Pindar
from that of ancient editions and commentaries. The Alexandrian
scholars divided the lines into shorter metrical lengths, and it was
Gottfried Hermann, followed by Boeckh, who first established that
Pindar was composing in longer metrical periods than those of dramatic
lyric poetry. 51 Pindar’s metrical structures are elaborate, and in the case
of his Aeolic poems difficult to analyse. He differs significantly from
Bacchylides in his tendency to avoid a correspondence between breaks in
metrical and sense structure. In Pindar, word-end seldom coincides with
the end of a colon or metrical phrase, and his sentences often run over the
end of a period, strophe or triad. This kind of enjambment creates a
counterpoint between sense and rhythm, which carries one forward, and
gives much greater flexibility and variety to his poetry. This is especially
marked in the poems of his maturity, although in his last works (e.g.
Pyth. viii; Nem. xi) there is again a tendency towards structural
simplification, which goes with a remarkable compression and powerful
simplicity of language.

Although their language owes much to earlier epic and lyric, Bacchy-
lides’ vocabulary is usually traditional, whereas Pindar aims constantly at
originality. He uses words far more sparingly than Bacchylides, and his
expression is often elliptical, with abrupt, dramatic transitions and vivid,
complex imagery. These features make him at first sight difficult to
follow, but they also give his poetry great power and directness. Pindar
aims to give an impression of the freedom and spontaneity of inspiration,
but his technique is really very sophisticated, and he is more self-
conscious about his art than any earlier Greek poet. Bacchylides’ style is
smooth and easy. It has great charm, but seldom achieves real intensity
(cf. [Longinus] Suhl. 33.5). He is at his best in extended narrative, as in
the story of Ode v of Heracles’ descent to Hades, or of Croesus’ rescue
from the pyre in Ode hi. His dithyrambs are dramas in miniature, full of
life and colour. By contrast, Pindar’s narrative is rapid and impressionis-
tic. He approaches well-known stories at a tangent, concentrating on a
particular scene or moment, and leaving the audience to fill in the rest for

49 Cf. Forssman 1966 (j 38); Nisetich 1980 0 8l ) 26—31; Maehler 1982 (j 75) 1.9-12.

50 Cf. Dale 1969 (j 19) 41—97, and Nisetich 1980 (j 81) 31-9; Maehler 1982 (j 75) 1.14-23.

51 Cf. Hermann 1809 0 5 3 ) an< ^ A. Boeckh, ed. Pindari Opera (Leipzig, 181 1—21).

THE POEMS

2 4I

themselves. This was a new and striking development in the history of
Greek narrative style, whose repercussions were felt much later,
especially in Hellenistic poetry.

In their basic content epinician poems can seem quite predictable, and
some modern scholars have wrongly labelled everything in this type of
poetry as purely conventional. The poet’s primary aim is clearly to praise
the victor and commemorate his achievement. This often leads to praise
of his family or city, or both, and references to the exploits and fame of
his ancestors. These may develop into a ‘mythical’ narrative. Alternati-
vely the narrative element, which is a regular but by no means
indispensable ingredient of the poem, may spring from some other
aspect of the occasion, for example the place of the victory with its
associated legends, or from some general reflection, stimulated by the
victory. Such gnomic reflections are another regular element, and they
usually serve as structural pivots for a transition from present to past or
vice versa. Other recurrent motifs are (as in hymns) the opening
invocation, and prayers for future success and prosperity, which can
effect a transition, or alternatively conclude the song.

Although these constituents seem simple enough in essence, the
possibilities for thematic and structural variation are very wide, and
there is always a tension between the poet’s inspirational freedom, which
strives to escape from set rules and patterns, and the sense of a need to
fulfil the primary task of praise, which is the poet’s debt ( chreos ) to the
victor, and to keep a proportion between the parts of the song. Pindar
speaks of the ‘ordinance’ ( tethmos ) of epinician song, which imposes
obligations and limits on him ( Nem . iv.33-4; 01 . vii.88; Paean vi.54-7),
and he often refers to the need for proportion ( metron , kairos) and brevity
{ 01 . xni. 47-8; Pjth. 1.81-4, iv. 247-8, 286, ix. 76-9; Nem. x. 19-20; Isthm.
1.60-3, vi. 5 6-9).

From these diverse materials the poet constructs an elaborate, highly
wrought work of art, which invites comparison with other refined forms
of craftsmanship, such as architecture and sculpture, and the arts of
weaving, embroidery and jewellery (cf. 01 . vi.1-4; Pyth. vi.7— 17, vn.3;
Nem. iv. 8 1, v. 1-3; Pyth. iii.i 1 3; Nem. vn.77-9, vm.14-1 5; fr. 179 Snell,
etc.; cf. also the frequent use of terms such as poikilos and daidallein). But
the stability of the visual arts is combined and contrasted with the mobile
quality of the spoken word, which is free to fly over earth and sea, and
outlasts all material monuments.

An important technique for welding this material together is that of
thematic or verbal repetition. Pindar often uses ring composition,
whereby a poem, or part of a poem, is framed by a series of recurring
themes, usually repeated in reverse order. This is a fundamental device of
early Greek poetry, especially narrative song. But Pindar frequently uses

242 8 d. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

less obvious patterns of imagery or ideas, sometimes repeated in the
same metrical position, in order to give shape and direction to his subject
matter. These patterns are infinitely variable and not easy to analyse. It is
dangerous to overstress their significance, but they contribute to the
overall effect of the poem.

The opening invocation may be very brief, but it can also develop into
a small preliminary hymn. (Pindar actually uses the word irpoolfiiov at
Pyth. 1.4, vii. 2; Nem. 11.3; and vpvov TrpoKwpuov at Nem. 1v.11). 52
Occasionally (e.g. 01 . xiv) the whole poem is in hymn form. Whereas
Bacchylides often has a simple invocation of the Muses or Fame, Pindar’s
proems are elaborate and varied. Sometimes he will invoke well-known
deities, at others the victor’s city or the place of the victory. But he can
also begin with a material object or element, which is seen as endowed
with divine power, such as water and gold (O/. 1) or the lyre (Pyth. 1), or
else with what would now be called an abstract idea, which he sees as
divine, such as Truth ( 01 . x.4), Fortune (Ol. xm), Wealth (Pyth. v) or
Quiet (Pyth. viii). 53 Pindar can invest these divinities with exceptional
powers, as in his invocation of Theia (Divine Lady), the mother of the
Sun (Isthm. v. iff), who is said to be the source from which gold derives
its value, and the origin of all human success in contests on land or sea. In
his frequent references to such abstract ideas as Time, Truth or Law,
Pindar seems to be looking for principles at work in the world on a
higher and more philosophical plane than that of the traditional Greek
gods (cf. 01 . 11. 17, x.53-5; frs. 33, 169, 205 Snell).

In his treatment of the Olympian gods Pindar adopts an explicitly
critical attitude to traditional stories, rejecting those which he sees as
straining credulity or being offensive from a moral point of view (Ol.
1.25 ff, ix. 28— 41, etc.). Sometimes he will seem to accept the familiar
version, only to surprise his audience by replacing it suddenly with one
of his own. In Pythian ill, for example, he appears to be referring to the
raven which brought news to Apollo of the infidelity of Coronis, but
then he says that it was Apollo’s own omniscience which persuaded him
of the truth (27—30). This device draws attention dramatically to the
poet’s innovation. His gods are dignified and can appear remote. But
there is also a tendency to stress their nearness, both in legendary
narrative and also in the poet’s references to his own personal connex-
ions with particular gods and heroes, for example Apollo (Pyth. vm.67-
9; Paean vi.i— 18) or the Mother of the Gods and Pan (Pyth. m.77-9), or
the hero Alcmaeon (Pyth. vm.56-60). Pindar’s allusions to the mystery
cults of Demeter and Persephone, and to the doctrines about life after
death and reincarnation which had developed around these, also show a

52 Cf. Schadewaldt 1928 (j 91) 269-81.

53 Cf. Frankel 1975 (j 59) 481—8 and Bowra 1964 (j 9) 84-8.

AFTERMATH

243

concern for the personal implications of religious belief, at its most
crucial point { 01 . 11.5 3-83, frs 129-31, 133, 137).

This paradoxical sense that the divine world is immeasurably separate
in its eternal nature from the human, but that man can nevertheless come
very close to the gods, is expressed in the proem to Nemean vi (1—7):

Single of men, single of gods is the race. From a single
Mother we both draw breath. But a total difference of power
Keeps us apart: for the one is nothing, whereas the brazen
Heaven remains a sure

Foundation for ever. And yet somehow we resemble
In greatness of mind or in nature the immortals:

Although we know not by day or during the night-time
To what line

Fate has written that we should run.

All success demands and is counterbalanced by effort and suffering,
but song, as the ‘mirror for fine deeds’ ( Nem . vn.14) is the reward for
labour, both now and in the future, with its promise of glory. The divine
radiance of victory brings men joy and peace {Pyth. vm.95-7). Their
celebrations echo the gods’ life of feasting, music and pleasure, and after
physical death poetry offers immortality to a man’s name. Pindar’s
eschatology occasionally goes further, suggesting that those who have
lived exceptional lives on earth will eventually enjoy a special fate after
death with the heroes in the Island of the Blest { 01 . 11.61-83). Bacchylides
also describes how Apollo rescued Croesus from death, carrying him off
to live with the Hyperboreans, ‘on account of his piety, because he sent
the greatest dedications made by any mortal to holy Pytho’ (111.58-62).
The rulers to whom these poems are addressed are praised for a similar
magnanimity in the use of their vast wealth (Bacchyl. hi. 10-22, 63-6;
Pind. 01 . 11. 90-100). By implication, such greatness of achievement, and
the benefits it brought to one’s fellow-men, could offer hopes of a heroic
fate beyond the boundaries of this life.

VII. AFTERMATH

Epinician poetry reached its peak of development very rapidly, and there
were no worthy successors to the three great poets of this genre. Songs in
praise of athletes continued to be composed. Two short fragments
survive of a poem attributed to Euripides, celebrating Alcibiades’
chariot victories of 416 b.c. at Olympia {PMG 75 5— 6). 54 But this was an
exceptional occasion, and we do not have any other surviving poems of
this type. The great age of the epinician is the period immediately after
the Persian Wars, when for the first time in the historical period the

54 Cf. Bowra 1970 (j 7) 134-48.

244 8 </. PANHELLENIC CULTS AND PANHELLENIC POETS

Greeks were drawn together in a unity which found one of its most
significant forms of expression in the panhellenic festivals. The threats
from abroad also gave a special impetus to the old form of education,
which linked musical culture and athletic training. At the time of the
Peloponnesian War we see this system breaking down, and this break-
down coincided with the destruction of the brief and fragile ideal of
Greek unity. The athletic festivals continued to flourish throughout later
antiquity, but never again do we find that unique combination of
physical achievement and musical celebration (atbla and their apoina of
song) which flowered in Greece in such a memorable way, in the course
of the fifth century b.c.

CHAPTER 8^

ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

WALTER BURKERT

I. CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Although what follows concentrates on the fifth century, it has to be seen
in a larger perspective. Religious ritual is conservative and may survive
for uncounted generations; its authority, for Greeks, is simply tra-
ditional custom, nomos. It shapes society, but it is also affected by all
changes on the political, economic or intellectual level. From the earliest
times on, ritual activity concentrates on special occasions that stand out
from everyday life and serve as markers in the flux of time — the festivals.
The basic elements of these are simple: processions, dances, vows and
prayers, animal sacrifices with feasting, and contests {agones) of various
kinds; yet special variants and combinations make up a system of
impressive complexity, characterizing the group or city concerned as
well as the gods and heroes addressed in the cult.

The rituals of Greek polis festivals contain elements of great antiquity.
Particular traits of animal sacrifice as found especially in the Athenian
ceremony of ‘ox-murder’, Buphonia, have been traced to the palaeolithic
period, 1 and the women’s festival of Thesmophoria has been credited
with a ‘stone age’ character, too. We are on firmer ground in stating that
the linguistic form to designate festivals in Greek, especially the suffix
-teria, had been established by the Mycenaean epoch. The form of
months’ names derived from festivals, with the suffix -(ter) ion, is
secondary, but still common to Athens and the Ionians from the islands
and Asia Minor and must thus go back to the beginning of at least the
first millennium. In fact there is a common stock of festivals characteris-
tic of Ionians and Athenians which points to a common heritage:
Apaturia (Hdt. 1.147), Lenaea, Anthesteria. No less characteristic is the
division of the population into four phylai (tribes), each headed by a
phylobasileus (tribal king); after the reform of Athenian phylai, the
phylobasileis still continued to exist with their religious obligations and
privileges. There must have been in addition a single basileus (king) for
the polis as a whole; when yearly election of the magistrates had been

1 Meuli 1946 (k 60); Burkert 1972 (k 12) 20-ji, 1 j j-61.

2 45

246

%e. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

introduced, the basileus was one of them, second in rank after the archon,
with his chief duty to take care of the traditional festivals (Arist. Ath.Pol.
5 7). 2 The priesthoods of individual gods in their several sanctuaries were
the prerogative of certain noble families, including those of the cult of
Athena Polias and Erechtheus-Poseidon on the Acropolis, of which the
Butadai were in charge.

When the Athenian laws were codified by Solon, the calendar of
festivals and sacrifices formed part of them. This was no obstacle to
further expansions and additions. By the middle of the sixth century the
two festivals called ‘great’ surpassed all the others in splendour: the
Panathenaea at the beginning of the civil year in summer and the ‘Great
Dionysia’ in the spring; the archon was responsible for both. The
Eleusinian Mysteries, supervised by the basileus, equally rose in
prominence.

The revolution of 5 10 which paved the way towards a more equal
distribution of civil rights ( isonomia ) did not intentionally change the
established system of cults. There were additions, especially the ten
heroes of the phylav, there was increased public control of the finances of
cults, with various bodies of elected officials in charge of the treasuries,
expenditures and emoluments of sanctuaries. Sometimes special taxes
were raised to finance a specific cult. 3 For the dithyrambic choruses,
tragedy and comedy at the great festivals, especially the Dionysia, choregoi
were selected from among the rich citizens who derived prestige from
conspicuous expenditure.

New impulses for change came through the historical events, the crisis
of the Persian Wars with devastation of city and citadel and the ensuing
victory which brought an enormous increase of power, wealth and
influence and made Athens the centre dominating the Greek world. The
programme of rebuilding launched by Pericles was almost exclusively
concerned with the public sanctuaries. Only then did the Acropolis lose
its function as a fortress and become the centre of state religion
exclusively. The Hephaestus temple above the Agora and the Poseidon
temple at Sunium still remain as well-known survivals of this epoch.

During these years, about the middle of the century, political and
social change was faced with a most profound challenge on the
intellectual level in what is commonly called the sophistic movement.
Independent thinking had developed in small coteries of men who read
and wrote books, the ‘pre-Socratics’; now the consciousness of possible
progress in knowledge and organization of life spread to a larger public,
with men such as the ‘natural philosopher’ Anaxagoras and the ‘sophist’

2 The old hypothesis that the basileus by title and function was a continuation of the Mycenaean
king has been disproved by Linear B: a Mycenaean king was called lvanax.

3 Schlaifer 1940 (k 83) 233—41.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 247

Protagoras leading the ranks. Their teachings shook the very foundation
of established religion, the nomos, the authority of the forefathers. The
traditional way of speaking about gods in the form of anthropomorphic
myth was soon found to be unacceptable past remedy. But also the cults
were felt to be old-fashioned; the ‘Buphonia’ became proverbial for the
ridiculous attitudes of a hoary past (Ar. Clouds 985).

The crisis led to polarization, which becomes manifest in a surge of
trials on the charge of ‘impiety’ ( asebeia ); this now was found not only in
sacrilegious acts, but in teachings and beliefs. 4 Both Anaxagoras and
Protagoras were affected. In 399 a later victim was to be Socrates.

The surprising fact is that the crisis of modernism did not destroy the
system of cults either at Athens or anywhere else. This was not due to any
spirited defence of traditional religion but rather to unreflective exper-
ience which found the religious forms of common life simply irreplace-
able. Many will have concurred with the matter-of-fact position of
Pericles, who stated that we believe in the existence of immortal gods on
account of the honours which they receive, and of the good things they
bestow on us (Plut. Per. 8,9)- who would risk putting this to the test? Or
witness Thucydides’ description of the fleet setting sail for Sicily (vi.32):
a trumpet calls for silence, and the traditional prayers and vows are
pronounced in unison, led by the sonorous voices of heralds; mixing-
bowls are set up all along the piers; all the soldiers and the officials of
Athens pour libations to the gods; even the onlookers join in the vows,
and only when they have finished the libations with the sacred song, the
paian, do the ships begin to move. Who could exclude himself from such
an event? Even if the gods were found to deny their help, as in this case,
there was nothing left but to try again.

After the constitutional crisis of 41 1, restorative trends become
noticeable. Among other ancestral laws, the revision and publication of
which was organized, there was a comprehensive calendar of sacrifices to
be set up in the ‘Porch of the King’ in the Agora; the huge task of
compilation was entrusted to a certain Nicomachus who worked on it
for about ten years; he was accused of accumulating more sacrifices than
the city could possibly afford, but his work on the code was brought to a
successful conclusion. 5 About the same time a new form of antiquarian
literature was inaugurated which persisted for some generations: local
chronicles dealing especially with mythical traditions in relation to
Athenian institutions, cults and festivals, called Atthides . 6 We must not
assume too much undisturbed continuity and scrupulousness in the
performance of old rituals, but much of the religious system of the polis

4 Dercnne 1930 (j 22); Rudhardt 1960(0 80); Fahr 1969 (k 26).

5 IG i 1 239-40; LSS 10; LSCG 17; Lys. xxx; Dow i960 (d 22).

6 Beginning with Hellanicus FGrH 323a; FGrH 323-9; Jacoby 1949 (c 57).

248

8e. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

is seen to continue down to the Roman conquest and even beyond to the
end of the pagan world, with the temples of the fifth century still
presenting their gorgeous facades for the same festivals. Many Athe-
nians would go on to experience their home as the place ‘where the
mystery hall is opened in sacred ceremonies, where . . . the high temples
and images of gods are standing, where there are the most sacred
processions of the blessed gods, sacrifices adorned with beautiful
wreaths for the gods and feasting at various times of the year, and
especially the joy of Dionysus in spring’ (Ar. Clouds 302-1 1).

II. NOTE ON THE SOURCES

The character of our sources changes with the general development.
Much of the documentation still consists in the material remains of cults
in the sanctuaries as recovered and analysed by archaeology. But the
growth of literacy led to the greater regulation of religion, for laws,
including leges sacrae, were published in the form of inscriptions under
the pressure of the democratic system. There are fragments of sacrificial
calendars prior to 480 ( IG i 3 230-2) and the regulations for the ‘precinct
governors’ of the Acropolis, the ‘Hekatompedon inscription’; 7 there are
similar regulations from the following epoch, e.g. from the Agora (IG i 3
234 = LSCG 1) and from the Eleusinium (IG i 3 6 = LSS 3); then comes
the big codification of Nicomachus (above, n. 5). Individual demes
published their leges sacrae too, such as Scambonidae (IG i 3 244 = LSCG
10) and Paeania (IG I 3 250 = LSS 18). 8 Similar codifications from the
fourth century are relevant for the earlier period, too, such as the
calendar of Erchia (LSCG 14) or the convention of the ‘Salaminioi’ (LSS
J 9)-

The fifth century saw the outburst of Athenian literature which has
remained classic, especially tragedy and comedy. Tragedy, freely mov-
ing in the sphere of myth, tends to refer to local cults by telling their
‘causes’ (aitia). We find vivid representations of the Areopagus and the
cult of the Semnai in Aeschylus’ Eumertides, of Colonus Hippius in
Sophocles’ second Oedipus play, of Acropolis cults in Euripides’
Erechtheusp there are many shorter references to other local traditions.
Comedy takes religious practice for granted in passing remarks and
sometimes brings it live on stage, though in a parodistic vein, for
example, the drinking contest of the Anthesteria (Ar. Acb. 1085-234),
the women’s gathering at the Thesmophoria (Ar. Tbesm. passim), and
even the chorus of Eleusinian initiates (Ar. Frogs 316-459).

Historiography as inaugurated by Herodotus has invaluable accounts

7 IC i 3 4; Jordan 1979 (k 44). 8 Mikalson 1977 (k 61).

9 C. Austin, Nova I : ragmen la Suripidea in Papyris Keperta (Berlin, 1968) 39.

THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR

249

of nomoi and of various incidents connected with cults and festivals. Attic
prose writing, which came into being in the last third of the fifth century,
rhetoric as well as historiography, has allusions to and brief accounts of
religious institutions; again, fourth-century authors supply much infor-
mation that is valid for the fifth century as well. But for detailed
knowledge of Athenian cults and festivals we depend primarily on the
‘Atthidographers’ (above, n. 6), fourth-century authors of Attic chron-
icles, although these survive only in fragments, mainly in commentaries
to Attic poets and orators.

A word needs to be said about iconography as a source for the
understanding of Athenian cults. 10 Attic painted pottery was produced
in large quantities, and among the thousands of often conventional
pictures there are some clearly depicting religious ceremonies, pro-
cessions, sacrifices and dancing. They are not numerous, except for
Dionysiac scenes, and interpretation is often difficult. One class of jugs
belongs to the Choes festival at the Anthesteria, 11 another group of
characteristic representations has women worshipping a very primitive
image of Dionysus; these have come to be called ‘Lenaean vases’, 12 but
on insufficient evidence. A few interesting pictures of the Dionysiac ship
waggon still belong to the sixth century, as does a unique representation
of the phallophoria . 13 On the whole, fifth-century art is less concerned
with group action. A celebrated exception is the Panatheniac frieze
encircling the cella of the Parthenon, 14 a unique self-representation of the
Polis at her ‘great’ festival in the presence of her heroes and her gods.

III. THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR

Greek calendars are composed of lunar months that shifted from year to
year, unlike the dates computed by the Julian calendar in modern
chronology. The Athenian year begins in summer after harvest, with the
first month, Hekatombaion, roughly corresponding to July. This and
the following months are each named after a festival: Metageitnion,
Boedromion, Pyanepsion, Maimakterion, Posideon, Gamelion, Anthes-
terion, Elaphebolion, Munichion, Thargelion, Skirophorion. It is not
only the similarity to other Ionian calendars that testifies to the antiquity
of the system; another indication is the fact that by the sixth and fifth
centuries some of the festivals implied in month names (Hekatombaia,
Boedromia, Elaphebolia) had become quite insignificant in comparison
with other festivals, celebrated in the same month, that had risen to

10 A critical assessment in Rumpf 1961 (k 82); Met2gcr 1965 (1 1 10).

11 Van Hoorn 1951 (k 88).

12 Frickenhaus 1912 (1 65); Pickard-Cambridgc 1968 (j 85) 30-4; Burkert 1972 (k 12) 260-2.

13 Pickard-Cambridgc 1968 (j 85) figs. 1 1 - 14 ; Simon 1980 (k 84) 284. Deubner 193 2 (k 23) pi. 22;

Pickard-Cambridge 1962 (j 84) pi. iv. 14 Brommer 1977(1 27).

250 8«. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

special splendour - Panathenaea in Hekatombaion, Mysteria in Boedro-
mion, and Dionysia in Elaphebolion. It is interesting to note that most
names of months refer to festivals of Apollo and Artemis, except for the
four winter months from Maimakterion to Anthesterion, three of which
include the ancient festivals of Dionysus, the rural Dionysia, Lenaea, and
Anthesteria in turn.

Yet there is no single system determining the calendar of festivals in
the well-documented period, but a conglomerate of various circles,
correspondences and oppositions that make a complex rhythm of life.
There are the seasonal changes between winter storms (Maimakteria),
spring blossoms (Anthesteria) and summer heat; there are the main
agricultural events: sowing, reaping and vintage; there is the political
symbolization of dissolution and a new beginning surrounding the New
Year festival; there are the celebrations of the phratries and of cult
associations of women. Moreover, responsibility for different cults
rested with the basileus, the archon, certain priestly families, and in some
cases with members of private cult organizations; furthermore, the
demes, 1 3 9 altogether, had traditional cults of their own, each marked by
its own peculiar stamp and paralleling the cults of the city.

The New Year festival already had a special standing in the ancient
Near East. At Athens it culminated in the Panathenaea on the 28
Hekatombaion, but the preliminaries began almost two months in
advance. The rituals concentrated on the main cults of the Acropolis, of
Erechtheus, the aboriginal king who was most closely associated with
Poseidon in cult, and his protecting deity, the ‘Athenian’ goddess,
Athenaia, Athena, 15 who for the citizens is just ‘the goddess’, 77 deos. The
approaching end of the year brought with it the need to clean the temple
and to wash the garments of the goddess: Kallynteria, ‘Making tidy’, and
Plynteria, ‘Washing’, are performed by women, and since the image of
the goddess was veiled and the temple closed to visitors, this was a day of
ill omen. 16 There follows a strange nocturnal ceremony, Arrhephoria,
when two girls who have been living for almost a year in the service of
the goddess on the Acropolis, and have taken part in the weaving of
Athena’s peplos, are dispatched from the citadel by the priestess through a
special passage close to the precinct of Aphrodite, carrying on their
heads in baskets objects purportedly unknown to them as well as to the
priestess. This ritual of t\\e arrhephoroi ot errhephoroi xl seems to reflect the

15 Whether the goddess got her name from the city or vice versa is an old controversy. Word
formation is in favour of Athenai> Athenaia. Burkert 1985 (k 16) 139.

16 For the date of Plynteria there are conflicting testimonies, Mikalson 1975 (o 59) i6of, i6jf; the
calendar of Thorikos (SEGxxx 111.147, lines 52—3) has Skirophorion,notThargelion. The Plynteria
procession is to be kept distinct from the Palladion procession, Burkert 1970 (k 11).

17 errhephorein is the form used in Attic inscriptions since the third century b.c.; the literary texts
have arrhephoros-, the word should mean ‘dew-bearer’; Burkert 1966 (k 10).

THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR 2 5 I

Structure of puberty initiations, the seclusion of ‘virgins’ ending in an
encounter with Aphrodite, generation and birth. There is a correspond-
ing myth about the daughters of Cecrops, the first king on the Acropolis:
they opened a secret basket at night against the goddess’ instructions,
discovered the earth-born divine child Erichthonius (= Erechtheus)
encircled by a snake, and jumped panic-stricken to their deaths from the
Acropolis rocks. Later, by the middle of Skirophorion, at the ceremony
called Skira, the priest of Erechtheus and the priestess of Athena leave
the citadel in procession and proceed towards the frontier on the way to
Eleusis; two days later the ‘Heralds’ ( Kerykes ) perform that proverbially
old-fashioned sacrifice, the ‘ox-murder’, Buphonia, right on the Acropo-
lis, in honour of ‘Zeus of the City’, whence the festival was called
Dipolieia. By an elaborate trick the sacrificial bull was made responsible
for his own death: several animals were driven around a table filled with
vegetable offerings, and the one which first touched the food was slain
immediately; but the ox-slayer had to flee in his turn, and there followed
a mock trial in the prytaneion at which the participants had to shift the
‘guilt’ of killing the ox from one to another, until the knife itself was
found to be the murderer and thrown into the sea. This curious ‘comedy
of innocence’ may be of special antiquity, as analogies in Siberian
hunters’ costumes suggest (above, n. i). It acts out and playfully
overcomes the antinomy inherent in all sanguinary sacrifice: killing for
food becomes a ritual to honour a god. This uncanny act falls into the
gap separating the old year from the new and in a way links Athens with
Eleusis: myth has Erechtheus perishing in the first Athenian war against
Eumolpus of Eleusis, while his widow became the first priestess of
Athena (above, n. 9).

Hekatombaion, the New Year’s month, once more recalls disorder
with the festival of Kronia - analogous to the Roman Saturnalia - when
slaves are treated to a feast and may revel freely through the town. This
has an air of the past golden age, when Kronos was king, before Zeus
took over by force. Normal order is finally restored with the Panathe-
naea, the festival of Zeus’s formidable daughter. There are no longer
perplexing or scurrilous rites, but the normal elements of festivals in
stately parade. After an all-night festival {pannychis ), the day begins with a
torch-race from the grove of Academus through the city gate and the
market-place up to the Acropolis to light a fire on the altar of Athena;
there follows the great sacrificial procession towards the goddess
displaying the new garment (peplos) - later it was hoisted like a sail on a
ship waggon -, the enormous feast, and contests {agones), with both
musical and sports events. An archaic feature is the apobates ceremony,
when men in light armour jumped from chariots at full speed and
continued with a foot-race; this was said to have been invented by

252 8 tf. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

Erichthonius and seems to symbolize the king taking possession of the
land. Panathenaic victors received amphorae filled with olive oil as a
prize, the special product of Attic soil granted by Athena and her father.
The Panathenaea, especially its sports events, was celebrated on a large
scale every fourth year; the intention had been, in 562, to create a
panhellenic festival equivalent to the Olympic Games. This plan had
failed; but with the new glory acquired through the Persian Wars the
festival was to represent Athens itself, bound to the goddess by a
divinely sanctioned, civilized order.

While the second month seems to have no major festival, Boedromion
and Pyanepsion (roughly September/October) contain celebrations
concerned with agriculture and the fertility of the soil as autumn sowing
approaches. The mysteries on 19/20 Boedromion are taken to reflect the
gift of grain brought to Eleusis by Demeter, even if the emphasis comes
to be more and more on death and afterlife. It is the hierophant of Eleusis
who proclaims at the beginning of the next month, 5 Pyanepsion, the
‘Festival before sowing’, Proerosia ( LSCG 7), with special sacrifices
which are to guarantee good crops; similar sacrifices will accompany
‘Sprouting’ ( Chloaia ), ‘Shooting of stalks’ ( Kalamaia ) and ‘Blossoming’
{Antheia) of the corn. But it is also in this connexion that the festival of
women, Thesmophoria, takes place in Athens on 10-15 Pyanepsion:
sacrificial pigs are thrown into crevices or subterranean receptacles, 18
and the putrefied remnants of the last year, hauled up again, are put on
the altars and later mixed with the seed, the clearest case of agrarian
magic in Attic ritual.

Pyanepsion also had a festival associated with vintage, which could
not be fixed in the calendar. At the Oschophoria, vine twigs with grapes
( oschoi ) were carried in procession towards a sanctuary of Athena Skiras
at Phalerum; there was a race of the ten phylai as well, but the texts seem
to be confused, and the details are controversial. 19

Maimakterion, the month of winter storms, had a purification festival,
Pompaia, about which not much is known. With Posideon, the series of
Dionysus festivals begins. The ‘rural Dionysia’ were held in the villages
at different days during the month; most conspicuous were those in the
Piraeus. A he-goat was led to sacrifice, and a wooden phallus was carried
in procession. From an Athenian perspective these festivals had a flavour
of peasant simplicity and ribaldry, Dionysiac vitality erupting from the
frozen structures of winter and orderliness. There was also a strange
ceremony called Haloa, of the ‘threshing-floors’(P), when women met in
secret and were said to indulge in licentious behaviour.

The festival of Lenaea in the next month, Gamelion, must have been

18 Wrongly connected with skira by Deubner 1932 (k 23) 4of, cf. Burkert 1985 (k 16) 242-3,

19 See Jacoby’s commentary on FGrH 328 f 14—16; Kadletz 1980 (k 46).

THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR

2 5 5

Fig. 32. Festival at a pillar image of Dionysus from an Attic red-figure stamnos by the Dinos
Painter, about 420 B.c. (Naples, Museo Nazionale 2419; ARV 2 1 1 ; 1, 2; after E. Pfuhl, Malerei and
Zeichnungder Griechen (1923) fig. 382.)

one of the old and characteristic Dionysus celebrations; many Ionian
cities call the corresponding month Lenaion. Lettai is a name for
Bacchants. But hardly any details are known. The so-called Lenaean
vases (Fig. 32) have women mixing wine and dancing in front of a
primitive image of Dionysus, made for the occasion and consisting of a
simple mask suspended from a column with a cloth wrapped around to
indicate a garment, adorned with wreaths and branches but without
hands or feet; but the attribution to either Lenaea or Anthesteria remains
unclear (above, n. 1 2). State management of the Lenaea was introduced
in 440 when it was made a second occasion, besides Dionysia, for the
staging of comedies.

Much more is known about the Anthesteria, the festival which gave
its name to the following month. This, too, is shared with Ionia, and it is
thus correctly called the ‘older Dionysia’ (Thuc. 11.15.4). The name
suggested ‘flowers’ to the Greeks, but the main subject was the new wine
that had been stored during the winter and was tasted for the first time in
spring. Thus the first day of the festival, 1 1 Anthesterion, is ‘Opening the
jars’, Pithoigia. Offerings were brought to the little sanctuary of
‘Dionysus in the Marshes’, iv At/xvat s, which was opened only in the
evening of this day and during the next. This, the 12th of the month is
called Choes, ‘Jugs’, from the vessels employed in a drinking contest: in
private meetings and in official banquets each participant had to empty
one chous— more than two litres — of wine, beginning at a trumpet signal,

2 54

Se . ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

Fig. 33. Attic red-figure chous, late fifth
century b.c. (London, British Museum E
5 36; after Van Hoorn 1951 (k 88) fig. 93.)

and the winner received a prize. Children who had entered their fourth
year were made to take part and offered a little jug of wine, together with
other presents, as shown in representations on surviving choes vases.
Children who died before they had reached the age of four were given a
chous in their tomb, usually a miniature copy (Fig. 33). The drinking
contest was a merry occasion that appealed to Aristophanes (Ach. 1085-
234), but it was surrounded by strange taboos. The entire day of Choes
was considered unclean, apotropaic twigs were hung at the doors, the
doorposts were painted with fresh pitch; each guest at the gatherings had
not only a chous of his own, but also a separate table, and silence had to be
observed during the drinking. Uncanny presences filled the streets,
masked people mocking at others from carts; tradition wavers between
calling them keres, harmful ghosts, or kares, strangers, or even forgotten
original inhabitants of the countryside. 20 Legend explained that the first
Choes had been held when Orestes, the polluted murderer, had stayed
with the king of Athens; hence the ‘day of defilement’ with its taboos,
and avoidance of the common table. Another mythical account of the
strange mixture of merry-making and uneasiness is the tale about the
violent death of the first cultivator of the vine, Icarius, or even of the
wine-god Dionysus himself, represented by the wine sacramentally
consumed in the ceremony. The following night saw one of the most
startling rituals — at least from a modern point of view — a ‘sacred
marriage’, the wedding of Dionysus to the ‘queen’ of Athens, the wife of

20 Burkert 1972 (k 12) 250-5.

THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR 255

the basileus, in a building called an ‘ox-shed’ ( boukolion ) in the market
place. Some vase paintings seem to allude to the wedding procession, 21
while the revellers brought their choes to the sanctuary ‘in the Marshes’
for a last offering to Dionysus. What ‘really’ happened in the boukolion is
left to the imagination. The last day, of ‘Pots’, Chytroi, took its name
from a special meal cooked in earthenware pots, a stew of ‘all kinds of
cereals and honey’. None of the priests tasted it, 22 as none of the
Olympian gods was invoked on this day but Hermes Chthonios, ‘of the
Underworld’. The uncanny aspect of the festival is prevalent in these
details, yet myth explained that the meal of ‘Pots’ and the sacrifice to
Hermes had first been held by the survivors of the great flood, when they
had reached firm ground again. The eery visitors are chased away: ‘Out
with you, keres [or kares\V There were games and musical contests
organized at the Chytroi, and there was a ceremonious and joyful festival
of ‘swinging’ for children, traced by myth, though, to the sad event of
Icarius’ daughter Erigone hanging herself. On the whole, the Anthes-
teria seem to have retained a popular character for a long time without
too much interference and organization on the part of the polis. Later in
the month there were the ‘Litde Mysteries’, held at Agrae near the river
Ilissus, and the ‘greatest festival of Zeus’ (Thuc. i.i 26.6), the Diasia, in
the same region. This was for a chthonian Zeus, Meilichios, honoured
with holocausts, but according to local custom the animals to be burnt
were made of pastry.

Elaphebolion must once have been the month of Artemis the
‘huntress of deer’, elaphebolos, but from the sixth century onwards it was
dominated by the ‘great’ festival newly introduced and second only to
the Panathenaea in lavish equipment, the ‘City Dionysia’. The god who
had his sanctuary installed at the south slope of the Acropolis had been
brought from Eleutherae. The central procession which mirrored the
advent of the god seems to have been basically a larger replica of the rural
Dionysia, with he-goat and phallus, but the magnificence of the festival
was manifested in choruses honouring the god, dithyrambs in which all
ten tribes competed, with a bull for a prize, and the three days of tragic
performances including satyr play, to which, since 485, a day of comic
performances was added. Music and poetry finally got the better of
ancient ritual.

The festival of Munichia, which gave its name to the following
month, was to honour Artemis installed at Munichia, the hill close to
Piraeus. It was overshadowed, as it seems, by the parallel cult of Artemis
of Brauron, transferred to the Acropolis by Pisistratus. The festival of
Thargelia in the next month received more attention, when the first

21 Deubner 1932 (k 23) p!. 18, 2; Simon 1980 (k 84) 279.

22 Accepting the text of Theopompus FCrbl 115 p 347b, Burkert 1972 (k 12) 164b.

2 5 6

8^. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

bread produced from the new crops, called thargela, was offered to
Apollo. This was connected with a much-discussed scapegoat ceremony:
two men, noted for their ugliness or other physical defects, were chosen.
They were adorned with strings of figs, one with white ones, the other
with black, representing women and men respectively; thus attired they
were chased out of town, carrying with them bad luck and uncleanness.
Even if the more drastic procedures attested for other places — stoning,
throwing from a cliff, even burning — seem to be absent from Athens, the
inhumane selfishness inherent in such forms of ‘purification’ seems not
to be to the credit of ancient ritual, even if it may mirror biological
strategies. 23

‘The good luck that has come from these sacrifices’ was the general
justification of worship on which Nicomachus and his accuser would
agree (Lys. xxx. 19). Piety was found to pay. As Euripides puts it, Athena
is bound to help her polis of which she is ‘Mother, Mistress and
Guardian’ because of the ‘honour of the many sacrifices’; yet for the
participants this meant at the same time ‘the songs of the young, the
hymns of the choruses, the cries resounding all night with the dance of
the virgins from the airy hill’ (Eur. Heracl. 770—83). The pannycbis on the
Acropolis at the Panathenaea was an unforgettable experience of a cult
filled with joy and life which defined the identity of Athens.

IV. POLIS RELIGION: CULTS DEFINING IDENTITY

The social function of ritual, which has received much interest in this
century, is so evident in Greek religion that we rather lose sight of its
‘truly religious’ dimension. To begin with the nucleus of society: the
concept of ‘family’ is commonly expressed in Greek by ‘hearth’ ( hestia ),
which is at the same time a goddess who claims first offerings from all the
meals. The newborn baby is carried around the hearth at the Amphidro-
mia and thus integrated into the cult community of the family. The
question asked in order to establish citizenship in the examination of
candidates for the archonship takes the form: ‘Where is your Apollo
Patroos and your Zeus Herkeios?’ (Arist. A.th. Pol. 55.3); to know the
god of the phratry and to have a household protected by Zeus is to know
one’s place in the city. Individual families had special cults which defined
their status; some had claims to public priesthoods. Legitimate citizen-
ship is conferred by the ‘brotherhoods’, phratriai, who meet at the
Apaturia festival in Pyanepsion; the father has to present his child at the
age of three, and later his grown-up son, to the meeting and pays for a
sacrificial meal; marriage is validated in a similar way. Illegitimate sons
have a mythical model in Heracles; the gymnasium of Heracles at

23 Burkert 1979 (k 14) $9-77.

Fig. 34. Krateriskos from Brauron. (Brauron
Museum; after L. Kahil, Antikt Kunst Beiheft i,
pi. 6, 5 .)

Kynosarges is open to them. The status of women finds various
expressions in ritual. Women have special goddesses by whom they
swear, they have their own festivals at which they may leave their
apartments and gather ‘according to the ancient customs’ ( LSCG 36.1 1).
The most important of these is Thesmophoria when women live
together for three days in temporary barracks, forming, as it were, their
own state with elected presidents; men are strictly excluded. The strange
ritual of throwing pigs into subterranean caves has been mentioned as a
kind of agrarian charm. The second day was a day of ‘fast’, Nesteia, made
shorter by mutual jesting. The last day included a sacrifice for ‘beautiful
offspring’, Kalligeneia, with an opulent meal. The crucial changes in a
woman’s life, from girl through marriage to matron, were dominated by
Artemis; virgins had to be ‘consecrated’ to Artemis of Brauron or
Munichia before marriage (Craterus FGrH 342 f 9); serving as ‘bears’
{arktoi), of Artemis at Brauron, they probably had to spend some time in
seclusion, with games and dances, 24 until they were restored to their
normal state at the festival of Brauronia.

The polis, as the more comprehensive community, had its own
‘common hearth’, koine Hestia, established as a centre for the magistrates
and the members of the Council dining together; there was also a temple
of Apollo Patroos and of the Mother of the Gods in the market-place.
But the supreme authority rested with the goddess of the Acropolis,
Athena. There were on the Acropolis two signs of divine action, created

24 Kahil 1965 (k 47), 1977 (k 48); Brelich 1969 (l 16) 240-79.

258 ie. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

at the foundation of Athens according to myth, Poseidon’s little ‘sea’ of
salt water and Athena’s olive tree; there was the wooden image of the
goddess ( xoanort ) which received the new garment at the Panathenaea.
Athena was also Ergane, ‘wool-worker’, as well as patroness of olive
trees, but over against these more female and peaceful aspects the sixth
century had already stressed the warlike features of the goddess: Athena
striking down a giant was the recurrent subject woven into the pep/os,
and it was shown in the pediment of the Pisistratean temple. The fifth
century added the huge statue of Athena Promachos, ‘fighting in front’,
and temple and priesthood of Athena Nike, ‘victory’ ( IG i 3 35-6). That
the most sumptuous and beautiful temple was dedicated to Athena the
Virgin, Parthenos, seems a contrast; it was probably to stress the
untouchable, impregnable character of the goddess and her city. It is
unclear, however, which form of the cult was installed at the Parthenon;
all the old and venerable rituals pertain to Athena Polias finally housed in
the Erechtheum.

Erechtheus, who in cult appears to be identified with Poseidon, but
distinguished from him in myth, is a peculiar case in so far as there seems
to be a ‘loser’ on both levels: Erechtheus was crushed by Poseidon,
Poseidon lost Athens to Athena. In more general terms the paradox is
that the female, the goddess, is triumphant while the male partner
represents the vanquished, the ‘chthonian’ principle. This structure is
widely attested and probably quite old; it arose from ancestor cults and
sacrifices and was to reinforce the dominating order in a patriarchal
society; the vanquished powers below have to be reconciled lest they
should thwart aggressive domination in the upper world. Thus Erech-
theus is ‘appeased’ at the Panathenaea (Horn. J/.2.5 jof).

Zeus, as everybody knew, was the supreme god; his altar held the
highest spot on the Acropolis where the rites of the Dipolieia were
performed. He had, in addition, his precinct outside the city walls as
Olympius, where the huge temple, begun by Pisistratus, was left
uncompleted until Hadrian (see CAH iv 2 295-6). According to Draco’s
code, oaths were to be sworn by Zeus, Poseidon and Athena, in that
order. Yet since Athena was the favourite daughter of Zeus, a sequence
Zeus— Athena— Poseidon— Demeter was equally established for Athenian
oaths.

The need to take oaths was the strongest means of linking the gods to
justice as required in everyday behaviour. For penal laws as codified in
Draco’s thesmoi, special religious forms were established by tradition:
different courts were tied to certain cults and provided with correspond-
ing myths. Most prominent was the Areopagus with the worship of the
‘Venerable’ avenging goddesses, the Semnai called ‘Eumenides’ in the
play of Aeschylus; according to him the court was set up for Orestes,

POLIS RELIGION

259

while others said Ares himself was put on trial there for having slain
Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon, who had tried to rape his daughter
(Hellanicus FGrH 323a f 22); in both cases myth stresses the possibility
that there may be ‘justified’ homicide. Involuntary homicide is the
speciality of the courts ‘at the Palladium’, where a sacred image of armed
Athena, allegedly brought from Troy, was worshipped by the clan of the
Buzygai and ceremoniously escorted to Phalerum for a bath once a year
(above, n. 16). A third court with a mythical background was at the
Delphinium, a sanctuary of Apollo. However, the court that handled
most legal proceedings in the fifth century, the Heliaia, established on
the basis of the Cleisthenean system of phylai, was far less dominated by
ritual and tradition, although of course purifications and oaths were
included in the proceedings. In a similar way the general assembly of
citizens, the ekklesia, was a rational organization; but it had still to gather
in a ‘clean’ place, purified by the peristiarchoi through the slaughter of
piglets and the burning of incense, and it could be stopped by a ‘sign of
Zeus’, diosemia; the Athenians, though, were less prone to heed such
signs than the Romans were. Most important, however, was ritual
connected with warfare, consisting in various sacrifices when leaving the
city, crossing the borders and engaging in battle; 25 it was the gods who
granted victory.

Three factors contributed to shaping and to some extent transforming
this system in the course of the fifth century: the evolution of democratic
government, patriotism born of the victory over the Persians, and the
emergence of empire. All these had their effects on the organization and
reorganization of cults.

A most revolutionary measure initiated by Cleisthenes was the
creation of ten new, totally artificial phylai. This had to find religious
sanction at once: ten local heroes, out of a list of one hundred names
(Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.6), were selected by the Delphic oracle and assigned
to give the names to the tribes (the ‘eponymous heroes’). 26 Some already
had individual cults, such as Cecrops on the Acropolis, Hippothoon at
Eleusis, and Ajax at Salamis; others, such as Antiochus, seem to have
become prominent only then; yet as it was the god of Delphi who
proclaimed that it was ‘better and more profitable’ to worship them,
innovation soon became tradition.

An anti-tyrannical stance was strengthened with a cult of Harmodius
and Aristogeiton, the so-called tyrannicides, established in the Agora in
477/6. 27 The more conservative though anti-Pisistratid families found
their ideal hero in Theseus, the democratic king. The Theseus myth had
become popular by the end of the sixth century, presenting, as it were, an

25 Burkert 1972 (k 12) 77 f; Pritchett 1979 (a ioi) vol. in. 26 Kron 1976 (k 55).

27 Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 1

zGo Se. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

Athenian contrast figure to Dorian Heracles. But Theseus was not
included among the tribal eponymous heroes, which left the door open
to assign him a special position. In 475, when Cimon conquered the
island of Skyros, he discovered the relics of Theseus, as predicted by the
Delphic oracle, and solemnly brought them to Athens; a spendid heroon
was built in the Agora, admired for centuries; funeral banquets and
games were instituted on 8 Pyanepsion; the Theseia remained one of the
major festivals in Athenian tradition.

A contrary move to accord worship not to a hero of the past but to the
living ‘people’ themselves, Demos, was made by the middle of the
century. 28 An image of Demos by Parrhasius (Pliny, HN xxxv.69),
admired by later antiquity, may have been votive in character. If Demos
is divine, he is not to be checked by human laws, and even gods will
tactfully avoid censuring him.

The rising influence of craftsmen among the citizens over against the
old aristocrats is to be seen in the superior rank granted to Hephaestus,
the god of smiths and potters. The Hephaestus cult plays a peculiar role
in Athens. A crude and probably very ancient myth made Hephaestus,
pursuing Athena, the father of Erechtheus-Erichthonius, the earth-
born king. But only by 420 was a splendid festival, Hephaestia,
organized ( IG i 3 8 2 = LSCG 1 3) with a torch-race in honour of the god
of fire, after his temple, dominating the west side of the Agora, had been
completed; it is still well preserved (see above, p. 218). It housed statues
of both Athena and Hephaestus. Both Athena and Hephaestus were
addressed in the festival of the smiths, Chalkeia, which marked the
beginning of weaving the Panathenaic peplos. Craftsmanship seemed to
balance warlike prowess.

The anguish and triumph of the Persian Wars was nothing less than a
religious experience. Many will have concurred with the word of
Themistocles: ‘Not we have accomplished this, but the gods and the
heroes’ (Hdt. viii. 109.3). The defeat of the barbarians was readily
ascribed to their destruction of Greek temples everywhere. The tomb of
the men who fell at Thermopylae was invoked as an ‘altar’ by Simonides
(fr. 5 3 1 PMG), and later Pericles would put all the men who fell for the
city on a level with the immortal gods (Plut. Per. 8.9). There were special
festivals instituted in memory of Marathon (6 Boedromion), Salamis (16
Munichion) and Plataeae (3 Boedromion); as for Marathon, the Athe-
nians had taken a vow to sacrifice one goat for each Persian killed, and we
have the word of Xenophon (An. in. 2. 1 2) that by his time they had not
yet come to close the account. Themistocles demonstrated his singular
position by founding a cult of Artemis Aristoboule, goddess of ‘best
counsels’ (Plut. Them. 22). There were unforeseen incidents to be

28 Kron 1979 (d 45).

POLIS RELIGION 261

memorialized as well: the cult of Pan the goat-god, on account of a vision
which appeared to the long-distance runner Philippides on his way to
summon Spartan help at the time of Marathon (Hdt. vi.105); the cult of
Boreas, the north wind which badly damaged the Persian fleet (Hdt.
vii. 1 89) (he, incidentally, was a son-in-law of Erechtheus): and even the
cult of Pheme, ‘rumour’, that miraculously spread to announce the
victory of the Eurymedon (Aeschin. 1.128; 11.145).

The myth of Theseus fighting the Amazons, the perversely dangerous
females from the fringe of ‘Asia’, was applied to Athens fighting the
Eastern threat. This is reflected in the imagery of Attic poetry, but it
attained official sanction with the dedication of Amazon statues,
wrought by the foremost artists of the day, in the most splendid temple
of Asia, the Artemisium of Ephesus. 29 Needless to say, the propagation
of the cult of Athena Nike, with the beautiful temple to the right of the
entrance to the Acropolis, was to express similar feelings of triumph.
Nike was also seen alighting on the right hand of the chryselephantine
statue of Athena Parthenos.

This celebrated image by Phidias set up in the Parthenon established a
new level of lavish magnificence; the similar and still more famous image
of Zeus at Olympia followed suit. It was to outdo the huge golden
Apollo of Delos. 30 The sanctuary of Delos, which had developed into a
centre of the ‘Ionians’ at the time of Pisistratus and Polycrates, had been
the obvious headquarters for the anti-Persian alliance. When these and
the treasury had been moved to Athens, the construction of the
Parthenon began. The hellenotamiai now officiated ‘from Panathenaea to
Panathenaea’. As the alliance developed into imperial rule, the allies were
made to participate in the Athenian cults, in both the ‘great’ festivals,
supplying a phallus for the Dionysia and a cow and a panoply for the
Panathenaea; they were also required to contribute first-fruit offerings to
Eleusis, where huge silos were built to hold the incoming grain ( IG i 3
78). The tribute paid by the allies, talent by talent, was carried through
the orchestra of the theatre when large crowds would be present for the
Dionysia (Isocr. vm.82); Athena received her share, to be assessed and
controlled ‘from Panathenaea to Panathenaea’ (IG i 3 52A.27). The
goddess would allow the funds to be used, among other things, for the
building programme. Imperialism is approaching cynicism, without
giving up the ritual frame of administration.

The last cults to be introduced in the fifth century, though, were not
the result of pride and imperial control. As a belated consequence of the
disastrous plague, Asclepius, the god of healing, was brought from
Epidaurus to Athens in 420. The snake representing the god was carried
on a waggon, and Sophocles received it in his house until the sanctuary

29 P. Devambez in L/AfC i (1981) 640-4. 30 Fchr 1979 (e 24).

262 8e. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

was completed. The festivals of Asclepius were thoughtfully integrated
with the celebrations of the Mysteries in autumn and Dionysia in spring.
The sanctuary occupied a prominent place on the south slope of the
Acropolis; however, the other Asclepius sanctuary in the Piraeus seems
to have enjoyed greater popularity for a while. The last addition was the
cult of the Thracian goddess Bendis, interest in whom had been aroused
by the campaigns in the north and by the employment of Thracian
mercenaries in the Athenian armed forces. 31 This festival brought the
uncommon spectacle of a torch-race on horseback. The image of the
goddess was thoroughly hellenized, but the quest for new gods was
beginning to reflect uncertainties of identity.

v. DIVINATION

While the functional and practical aspects of religious activity in ancient
cults are easily observed - the use and abuse of prestige and influence, the
display of social roles, the greedy hopes for ‘all good things’ - there is
another, more irrational side that tends to be obscured because it may
appear as sheer superstition. Although there was an absence of revela-
tion, of a sacred scripture and a theologically trained clergy, it was still
believed that there were ordinances and counsels of the gods to be
observed directly, through various ‘signs’ such as ‘sacrifices, the flight of
birds, chance utterances, dreams’ (Xen. Hipparch. 9.9). In the countless
uncertainties and anxieties of everyday life, in the private suffering of
disease and in the common danger of war, divination of all kinds was a
momentous factor in making decisions.

The interplay of experience and tradition had long led to specializa-
tion: on the one hand there were the established oracles, above all the
Pythian sanctuary at Delphi; to consult it was complicated, costly and
time-consuming, but its prestige remained paramount for generations.
On the other hand there were charismatic individuals, ‘seers’ \manteis),
who claimed special skills in interpreting the signs sent by the gods.
They usually relied on family tradition, but they had begun to use books
by the sixth century. Some were found to be especially successful and
acquired riches and influence. Their greatest responsibility was to
determine the correct time to engage in battle. Victory was thought to
belong no less to the seer than to the military commander: the Delphic
monument celebrating Aegospotami represents Lysander accompanied
by his mantis (Paus. x.9.7).

The enactment and development of cults in Athens constantly
involved dealings with oracles and seers. Each major change in ritual had
to be approved by Delphi; the impulse to establish new cults, but also

31 IG i 3 1 36 with arguments for a date 413/12; LSS 6.

DIVINATION

263

injunctions against their establishment, often came from seers. In order
to have counsel permanently available, the demos appointed different
kinds of ‘expounders’, exegetai, who either belonged to the Eleusinian
Eumolpids, were selected by Delphi, or were chosen by the demos } 1

Divination had played its part in overthrowing the tyrants. While
Hippias was collecting oracles of Musaeus, the Alcmaeonid opposition
had Delphi pronounce in favour of the liberation of Athens (no. 79). 33
The eponymous heroes of the tribes were selected by Apollo (no. 80).
Probably about the same time Athenians began to build their own, still
well preserved, treasury at Delphi 34 and to send, at irregular intervals to
be determined by special ‘signs’, a sacred embassy to Delphi to offer
sacrifice and to bring back sacred fire from Apollo’s hearth. While we
today suspect that the Delphic priests judiciously foresaw a Persian
victory, contemporaries credited the defeat of the barbarians to Apollo;
the tithe of the booty taken from the Persians was dedicated at Delphi in
the form of splendid monuments. The Athenians especially erected
monuments for Marathon and placed votive offerings from Salamis both
in their treasury and in a special hall constructed beneath the temple
terrace at Delphi. At that time Athens was granted promanteia , privileged
access to the oracle. Thus Delphi was consulted with regard to the
transfer of Theseus’ bones (no. 1 1 3 ), the colonies at Thurii (no. 1 3 2) and
Amphipolis (no. 133); there were regulations issued for families such as
the Praxiergidae (no. 1 24 = 1 G i 3 7) and surely on many more occasions.
One oracle that acclaimed the demos of Athens as an ‘eagle in the clouds’
(no. 1 21) naturally enjoyed popularity with the Athenians. By the
beginning of the Peloponnesian War, though, Apollo’s attitude had
changed, and the god clearly took a stand against Athens (no. 1 37). The
oracle authorizing the cult of Bendis (no. 30) was brought from Dodona,
the oracle of Zeus second in importance to Delphi. Yet in 404 a new
Delphic oracle forbade the annihilation of Athens (no. 171).

The crowd of private seers in a city such as Athens must have been
considerable. They were present at every sacrifice, and the officials had to
heed them (Arist. Ath.Pol. 54.6). We know of two men, Lampon and
Diopeithes, who rose to such prominence that they were repeatedly
attacked in comedy. Lampon was active in the foundation of Thurii, and
was even considered one of the ‘founders’ ( oikistes ) of the colony. He
predicted that Pericles would prevail over his adversary Thucydides
from the portent of a one-horned ram that had been found (Plut. Per.
6.2), while Anaxagoras explained the prodigy rationally through his

32 Oliver 1950 (d 62); Clinton 1974 (k 19) 89-93.

33 The numbers following refer to the collection of Delphic oracles in Parke and Wormell 1 9 5 6 (k
72) n; these numbers are also given in the more recent catalogue of Fontenrose 1978 (k 31)
(Concordance 430-3).

34 On its controversial date, Robertson 1973 (i 140) 1 167C

264

8e. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

knowledge of anatomy. Lampon was elected to sign important state
treaties in 421 (Thuc. v.19.2, 24.1); he cooperated with Eleusis and the
Delphic oracle in bringing about the decree about first-fruit offerings ( IG
i 3 78). Diopeithes had a decree passed which threatened with prosecution
for asebeia those who ‘did not believe in the divine things or taught about
things in the sky’ (Plut. Per. 32.2); tried on this charge Anaxagoras had to
leave Athens. The ‘divine things’ were, primarily, the ‘signs’ by which
the gods would give their directives; in the view of a man like
Diopeithes, this was the very foundation not only of piety, but even of
religion. The central role such signs played in Athenian religious
practice must not be underestimated.

VI. THE MYSTERIES

The festival of Eleusis, which was known simply as ‘the Mysteries’, is as
fascinating as it is elusive. Mysteries are initiation ceremonies with the
obligation to silence, and the secrecy was strictly and deliberately kept
throughout pagan literature. Yet the Mysteries were open to the public:
‘whoever among the Greeks wishes is initiated’ (Hdt. vm.65 .4), and the
huge Telesterion built by Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, held
more than 3,000 mystai. The administration of the Mysteries was in the
hands of the Athenian authorities, but the priestly functions inalienably
belonged to the two families of the Eumolpids and the Kerykes. In
investigations and lawsuits involving the Mysteries the non-initiated
were bidden to leave the court; the majority would be those who ‘knew’.
The ephebes regularly took part in organizing and protecting the
procession from Athens to Eleusis; it started at a special sanctuary above
the Agora, the Eleusinium. When Diagoras, called ‘the atheist’, provo-
catively violated the secret of Eleusis, he was pursued through the whole
Athenian empire, yet he escaped.

Philosophically inclined writers spoke about the ‘two gifts’ Demeter
brought to Eleusis, grain and the Mysteries. Both were intimately
linked, as the same myth about the rape of Persephone and Demeter’s
visit to Eleusis had to account for both. According to a late gnostic
writer, an ear of corn was shown by the hierophant at the climax of the
secret festival (Hippol. Haer. v.8.39). Yet the point of the nocturnal
celebration, whatever its symbols, gestures and words might have been,
was to arrive at ‘better hope’ for a life after death. This is already present
in the earliest text, the ‘Homeric’ hymn to Demeter, and it persisted to
the end of antiquity. The promise seems to have been general, with
different possibilities of interpretation.

We are well informed about the general programme (IG 11/111 2
1078 = LSCG 8) and some details of organization. At some time
participation in the ‘Lesser Mysteries’ in spring was made a prerequisite

PRIVATE PIETY

265

(PI. Gorg. 497c). On 1 5 Boedromion the candidates assembled at Athens.
There were purifications, including bathing in the sea, and the sacrifice
of piglets, one for each person. Some kind of verbal explanation and
instruction that prepared for what was to be ‘seen’ on the concluding
night must have been part of the proceedings. The main event was the
procession on the ‘sacred way’ to Eleusis, some 30 km from the city, on
19 Boedromion. Priestesses carried ‘holy things’ in closed baskets ( kistai ,
while the crowd chanted the rhythmical cry ‘ lake h’ 0 lakche'\ this was
soon understood as the invocation of a special daimon , Iakchos. With the
arrival at the Eleusinian sanctuary the fast was broken, and after sunset
the really secret rites began. We have some allusions: ‘wandering to and
fro’, terror in the dark, and sudden ‘amazement’ (Plut. fr. 178 Sandbach);
the Telesterion opened to admit the crowd, there were things ‘done’ by
the hierophant and the priestesses, presumably in the dark, dimly lit by
the torches of the torchbearer ( daduchos ); at some point a huge fire blazed
up in the middle, ‘under’ which the hierophant was seen officiating.
Persephone was called from the dead and somehow ‘appeared’, the
hierophant exhibited the ear of corn, and proclaimed the birth of a divine
child. The construction of the Telesterion gives some guidance to
imagination, with steps rising on all four sides for the onlookers, and the
anaktoron , a small rectangular building slightly off-centre with a door at
its side, where the hierophant had his throne. ‘Thrice fortunate he who
has seen these orgia,’ the shouts proclaimed. Yet we remain outside the
circle of those who ‘knew’. Dances outside the building must have
followed throughout the night, and there were bull sacrifices which
guaranteed a copious feast even here.

The Mysteries became part of the prestige of Athens and retained their
authority, and their identity, for about one thousand years. They make
strange company in the age of Euripides and Socrates. It remains for us
to speculate how the Greeks succeeded in this very special festival in
finding sense and ‘better hopes’ against the apparent senselessness of
death.

VII. PRIVATE PIETY

A pious man is one who is seen performing sacrifice and is known to
make use of divination: these are the criteria by which Xenophon (Mem.
1. 1. 2) tries to disprove the charge of asebeia against Socrates. Sacrifice,
primarily animal sacrifice accompanied by libations and incense, goes
together with prayers or rather vows which, if fulfilled, lead to votive
dedications. All these activities involve spending property; the problem
of whether the rich have better access to the gods begins to be discussed
in this period.

State cult and private worship are not to be seen as contrasts; they are

266

Se. ATHENIAN CULTS AND FESTIVALS

parallel and often intertwined. Like each private household, the city
observes rites in honour of Hestia, Apollo and Zeus. A very wealthy and
pious man such as Nicias made lavish dedications at Delos and Delphi,
but every Athenian could go to the Acropolis to offer a humble gift to the
goddess. The inscriptions and material remains from the Acropolis attest
numerous, varied, and simple votives at this time. 35 The state cult would
guarantee a rich meal to the citizens, at the Panathenaea, for instance; at
the Apaturia and the Anthesteria, family celebration and public cult
practically coincided. Each major business contract was sealed by oaths
in a sanctuary. No merchant dared to engage in sea-faring without vows
to the appropriate gods. The work of the peasant was obviously
dependent upon Demeter and Dionysus. In sickness everybody would
turn to the gods. Pericles installed a cult of Athena Hygieia on the
Acropolis when a good craftsman, incidentally wounded in the con-
struction of the Propylaea, had recovered (Plut. Per. 13.13). This cult
was meant to bring together the goddess and private needs more closely;
it was soon overshadowed, however, by Asclepius.

There were countless minor sanctuaries installed by associations,
families, or even individuals on special occasions. About 400 b.c.,
Archedemus, ‘seized by the nymphs’, adorned the cave of Vari south of
Athens with inscriptions and reliefs ( 1 G i 2 778-80), solving, as we would
put it, a private identity crisis through ritual activity. Beautiful offerings
connected mainly with marriage, it seems, survive from the small
precinct of ‘the nymph’ on the south slope of the Acropolis. 36 The cult of
nymphs, goddesses of living water, was popular everywhere, as was
Hermes: pillars of Hermes (Herms) were set up in both town and
countryside to mark crossroads and neighbourhoods — vase paintings
often show private sacrifices in front of them. Local associations,
observing the cult of Heracles with substantial feasts, spread over the
whole of Attica. There were still more groups celebrating Dionysus,
Bacchic thiasoi, not always easy to distinguish from simple drinking
parties.

It is perhaps more interesting that even women could be called
together for private Baccheia (Ar. Lys. 1 1). Conspicuous was the cult of
Adonis, the dying god beloved by Aphrodite. From Phoenicia the cult
had spread to Greece by the time of Sappho, but it never received official
status in the cities. The women raised a shrill lament over the death of the
god from the roofs of their houses in early summer, disconcerting for
men and men’s business (Ar. Lys. 389-96).

Another foreign god who became notorious was Sabazios, a Phrygian
variant of Dionysus. In certain Dionysiac thiasoi, the mythical singer

35 IG i 2 401—760; Raubitschek 1949 (c 162); Graef and Langlotz 1933 (1 70) nos. 1330— 417.

36 Travlos 1971 (1 171) 361-3.

PRIVATE PIETY

267

Fig. 3 5 . Lead puppet in a box, from the Cerami-
cus cemetery, Athens. (After Ath. Mitt . 81
(1966) Beilage 1; cf. Kurtz and Boardman 1971
(K 54) P- 46-)

Orpheus was claimed as an authority, books of Orpheus were presented,
and through a special and partially secret mythology startling doctrines
about metempsychosis and the divinity of the human soul were circu-
lated in radical opposition to the prevailing system of values; a special
form of ‘life’ was demanded; a totally new kind of spirituality could be
seen to be on its way. It is not clear, though, to what degree any
permanent groups or ‘sects’ or ‘Orphics’ were established; the cult was
promoted rather by itinerant ‘purifiers’ ( orpheotelestai ), who offered
initiations as a cure for various practical needs. But some suspicion
about private mysteries and new gods began to grow among the public.
Some of this is seen in the picture drawn of the Socratic circle in the
Clouds of Aristophanes in 423, and fun turned to hysteria with the
mystery scandal of Alcibiades in 415, which resulted in numerous
executions.

The trends towards the end of the century are not moving in any one
direction. There is rational detachment, there is a quest for a new
philosophical religion, there is scrupulous conservatism, there is growth
even of sheer superstition. While scientific medicine launched theoretical
attacks on healing by magic, amulets were provided even for Pericles
when struck by the plague (Plut. Per. 38.2), and from the end of the
century comes the oldest defixio found at Athens, a puppet pierced and
buried in the Ceramicus to harm an enemy (Fig. 3 5 ); 37 this was meant to
be serious. Intellectuals were developing new concepts of pure divinity,
all-powerful, all-knowing and without human shape, passions or needs,
yet practical manipulation remained a strong element in the piety of the
man in the street. There was growing complexity, but a radical break did
not come for centuries.

37 Trompf 1958 (k 87); Jeffery 1955 (c 136) 67—76.

CHAPTER 8/

ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

B. M. W. KNOX

I. INTRODUCTION

In the context of modern Western thought a title which associates these
two words raises expectations that the text so introduced will discuss the
influence exercised on written works of the imagination by the doctrines
of a religious establishment and the adaptation or critique of those
doctrines by the writers of the works. For fifth-century Athens,
however, the terms ‘religion’ and ‘literature’ (neither of which has a
satisfactory equivalent in ancient Greek) serve to designate activities
which differ significantly from their modern counterparts.

Literature, for us, is something written and to be read, but, though
there were undoubtedly books and readers in fifth-century Athens, the
principal medium of literary communication was not written text but
public performance. The Homeric epics were recited by trained specia-
lists who excelled in dramatic presentation; epinician odes for victories
won at the great athletic games were sung by a dancing chorus at the
victor’s home; dithyramb, tragedy and comedy were competitive events
mounted at the city’s expense in the huge theatre of Dionysus. All this is
not to say that there were no books or readers in fifth-century Athens;
the evidence, literary and pictorial, suggests widespread literacy and
even, in the final decades of the century, a book trade. But there can be no
doubt that for most Athenians the message of the poets, lyric, epic and
above all dramatic, was conveyed not by the written word but by the
word spoken and sung.

For the fifth-century Athenian audience the dominant literary pheno-
menon was the drama. Epic was a voice from the far past; lyric and choral
poetry a fading tradition, associated with the aristocratic and tyrannic
regimes of the Archaic period. But tragedy and comedy, though their
origin can be traced at least as far back as the era of Pisistratus, owed the
splendour of their fifth century achievements to the democracy which
had played so crucial a role in the defeat of the Persians. The festivals
which were the occasion for these dramatic performances, the Dionysia
and Lenaea, were high points of the civic calendar; they were also

268

INTRODUCTION 269

ceremonial days in the city’s religious calendar, for the performances
were a celebration of the god Dionysus.

By the fifth century the cult of Dionysus was widespread in Greece,
but it was only at Athens that it gave birth to the theatre. The nature of
the process which gave rise to this unique development is unfortunately
far from clear. In literary treatments of the Dionysiac myth (the Bacchae
of Euripides chief among them), as well as on black- and red-figure
Athenian pottery, the Dionysiac cult is portrayed as an ecstatic religion
which released the worshippers from the bonds of constraint imposed by
civilized life. It appealed especially to the women, confined as they were
in Greek society to the house and the daily round of household duties; it
sent them out to dance, dressed in fawnskins, on the hills among the pine
trees as Maenads, the mad women of Dionysus. The god brings a
temporary return to nature, to communion with the creatures of the wild
and an assumption of their innocence and strength. None of this,
however, is reflected in the organization of the festivities which in fifth-
century Athens bore the name of the god, Dionysia, and his female
devotees ( lenae ), the Lenaea. To judge from the cult aspects of the
dramatic festivals, Dionysus seems to have come to Attica not as a spirit
of the wild forest but as a fertility god, with power over the agricultural
crops on which the city’s life depended. This is how he appears in the
Acharnians (241-83) of Aristophanes, where Dicaeopolis, proud
beneficiary of a separate peace, celebrates the Rural Dionysia ( ta kat’
agrous), a festival held in December, which, it seems likely, was thought
to promote the growth of the autumn sowing. Dicaeopolis’ daughter
carries a basket containing offerings to the god (a cake with gravy ladled
on it), slaves follow carrying phalloi on poles and Dicaeopolis brings up
the rear chanting a ribald hymn to Phales, companion of Dionysus (it
contains what look like crude insults aimed at individuals). All these
features recur in the magnificent preliminaries to the dramatic perfor-
mances at the City or Great Dionysia, which were held in March— April.
The basket carrier ( kanepboros ) was of noble birth and her basket was of
gold, the sacrifices included a bull and other offerings besides, phalloi
were carried and, though we have little direct testimony to their
appearance, the revellers of the procession almost certainly indulged in
the satiric songs characteristic of Athenian processions. This procession,
pompe , was the prelude to a four-day religious holiday (shortened to three
days during the Peloponnesian War). The statue of the god was brought
in and seated to watch the dramatic performances; the theatre was
purified by the sacrifice of a pig and libations poured by the generals;
public business (except in emergencies) was suspended and prisoners
released on bail for the duration of the festival.

Drama emerged from a context of ritual celebration and remained

27 o 8 f ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

even in its developed form an act of worship, honouring the god in his
precinct. The origins of modern European drama offer a striking
parallel: the key role played by the dramatic presentation of the Easter
service, the trope known as Quern quaeritis — the words the angel
addresses to three Maries at the tomb. But the surface aspects of the
parallel draw attention in fact to the total dissimilarity of the two cases.
The Christian play was based on a sacred book, interpreted with
incontestable authority by an organized supranational priesthood, a
powerful hierarchy exerting immense spiritual influence and backed by
impressive economic resources. In Greece no such priestly organization
existed (priests were for the most part technicians of ritual sacrifice
presiding over local and family cult); there was no holy book, no fixed
sacred history, no ethical code based on divine revelation. For their
vision of their gods and the relation of those gods to human life and
morality the fifth-century Athenians still relied on the poets, Homer and
Hesiod in particular. All through the Archaic period the problem of the
connexion between these Olympian deities and human ideals of justice
and morality was a theme for the poets. Heraclitus and Xenophanes
criticized Homer and Hesiod in harsh terms but Theognis appealed for
understanding — ‘Dear Zeus, I wonder at you . . . how can your mind
bear to treat the wicked and the good man alike?’ (375-8); Solon tried to
justify the ways of Zeus to man by the slowness of justice which may fall
on the sinner’s descendants. Theology, in fact, was in Greece the
business of the poets before it became the concern of the sophists and
fourth-century philosophers, and Attic tragedy which dramatized, in a
religious context, the central myths of the Greek past, stories of heroic
action locked in a pattern of divine prophecy and intervention, assumed
the same prerogative and burden. The relation between ‘religion’ and
‘literature’ was a phenomenon unique in the history of the West.

The performances staged at the two festivals were a celebration of the
god; the celebrant was the city of Athens, the polis itself. The organiza-
tion and financing of the dramatic festivals was the responsibility of the
city’s annually elected magistrates and the Dionysia was a demonstration
to the Greek world of Athenian imperial power and of that cultural
supremacy which made Athens, in Pericles’ proud phrase, ‘the education
of Greece’. Unlike the Lenaea, celebrated in December, when stormy
weather on the Aegean restricted the audience to native Athenians, the
Dionysia, which marked the opening of the sailing season, attracted
visitors, private and official, from all over the Greek world. Once
arrived, they saw the tribute from the cities of the Delian League
displayed in the theatre, watched the orphaned sons of Athenian battle
casualties, now fully grown and equipped with arms by the state,
paraded in the theatre to receive the blessings of the people, and heard

INTRODUCTION

*7*

Fig. 36. Satyr player from an Attic red-figure cup by
Makron, about 490 b.c. (Munich, Antikensammlungen
2657; ARV 7 475, 267; cf. Boardman 1975 (1 17) fig. 3 14.)

the proclamation of decrees honouring foreigners and citizens who had
distinguished themselves by service to the Athenian state.

After these preliminaries the huge audience (the theatre could proba-
bly hold some 14,000 people) sat through the performance of twenty
dithyrambs, three sets of three tragedies, each followed by a satyr play,
and five comedies (the number was cut to three during the Peloponne-
sian War). The dithyrambs were lyric poems sung and danced by a
chorus of fifty which danced in a circle; ten choruses of boys and ten of
men (representing the ten Athenian tribes) competed for prizes. We have
very little idea of the nature of these dithyrambic poems. Their lyric style
was proverbially exalted and ornate and we have reason to believe that
by mid-century the music became more important than the words. This
event, however, was the one most calculated to rouse the partisan
emotions of the audience, for the ten different choruses of boys, like
those of men, represented the ten Athenian tribes in competition for a
prize. The three tragic poets had a day each for the presentation of three
tragedies; they were followed by a satyr play. This, as its name indicates,
had a chorus of satyrs, the grotesquely phallic companions of Dionysus
in myth and art (Fig. 36); it presented the mythic material in tones
ranging from light-hearted to burlesque. The comic poets offered one
play apiece; during the war when there were only three comedies instead
of five, they came last in the day, after the satyr play.

The planning for the festival had begun long before. One of the first
tasks of the incoming eponymous archon was to assign cboregoi for the
tragic and comic contests — one for each competing poet; the cboregoi for

272 8 f. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

the dithyrambs seem to have been elected by the members of the tribes.
The choregos was a wealthy citizen who assumed responsibility for the
training of the chorus, its costumes and salaries, as well as the salaries of
trainers and musicians. This form of imposed public service (the Greek
name for it has become our word ‘liturgy’) was standard practice in
democratic Athens; the same procedure was used to provide for other
state and tribal ceremonies and, in an emergency, to finance the
equipment, maintenance and repair of warships. A citizen might appeal
against his selection for such expensive honours, name someone weal-
thier who could better afford it, and even offer to exchange property with
him if he challenged that estimate. But such attempts at evasion were
uncommon; the choregia was regarded as a privilege as well as a duty, as is
clear from the fact that though resident aliens could serve as choregoi for
the Lenaea, only citizens were called on for the Greater Dionysia. The
post conferred conspicuous public honours. The choregos of the tribe
victorious in the dithyrambic contest received, as the representative of
his tribe, a tripod, for which he built a monumental base, inscribed with
his name, that of the tribe, the flute-player, the poet and the archon; there
was a whole street of such monuments and one, that of Lysicrates (334
b.c.), is still standing in Athens. The choregos had a place of honour in the
splendid procession with which the festival began; Alcibiades used to
wear a purple robe for it (Ath. xii. 5 34c) and Demosthenes had prepared
a gold crown and a gold-embroidered cloak for the occasion. Further-
more, fulfilment of this liturgy could be cited in the courts as testimony
to the speaker’s democratic loyalty and public spirit (cf. Lys. xxi.1-5,
xix. 29).

The actors were paid by the city and assigned by the archon, who also
selected the poets for the occasion. We have no account of how this was
done; presumably aspirants read their scripts to him. The prizes at the
contest itself, for the poets and later for the actors, were assigned by
judges who had been selected through an elaborate system of sortition
designed to eliminate personal influence (though they were certainly
subject to another form of influence, the audience reaction to the
performance). In this respect, as in every detail of its organization, the
theatre of Dionysus reflected, like the law courts and the Assembly, the
egalitarian spirit of democratic Athens.

II. TRAGEDY

Plays produced in such a thoroughly civic context could be expected,
their mythical content notwithstanding, to reflect social and political
concerns and this is indeed the case, though in tragedy specific
contemporary allusions were avoided. In six of the extant plays of

TRAGEDY

2 73

Aeschylus, for example, the outcome of the tragic action determines the
fate not just of individuals but of a city (or, in the case of the Persians , an
empire). But this political element, far from clashing with the solemn
religious note and deep moral concern characteristic of Greek tragedy,
combines with it and is in fact often inseparable from it, just as, in the real
life of the cities, it was sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to
distinguish clearly the political from the religious. The oracle at Delphi,
for example, was the voice of Apollo, who expressed the will of his father
Zeus, but it was at the same time a powerful arbiter in relations between
the Greek states on matters involving both peace and war. At Athens the
new temple on the Acropolis, the Parthenon, was a shrine of the city’s
patron goddess Athena; in its inmost recesses were stored the Athenian
war reserves, the tribute from the allies. And in the mythical tales which
the poets shaped to form a dramatic vision of the Greek past, the gods
were manifest in the patterns of the action even when they were not
actually represented on the stage.

The earliest tragedy we have, Aeschylus’ Persians (produced in 472), is
an anomaly: it is set, unlike the plays which accompanied it, not in
mythical time but in contemporary reality. It deals with events which
everyone in the audience had lived through and presents to a people
seated among the burned-out ruins of their city an idealized vision of the
war which shows no trace of hatred or contempt for the defeated
invader, gives no hint of the disunity of the Greeks and the fact that
many of them had fought on the Persian side. It mentions no Greek
leaders by name and makes no allusion to their partisan quarrels, past and
present. What it does is to create a dramatic world resonant with the
poetic and religious values inherent in the great myths which were the
normal basis of tragedy. Though the Greeks, and Athens in particular,
are given full credit for their endurance and courage, the glory for the
great sea battle is ascribed to heaven - ‘some power divine’, says the
Persian messenger, ‘has destroyed our host, weighing down the scale
with unequal fortune’ (345-6).

The divine motive is not so much partiality for the Greeks as anger
against Xerxes, who has overstepped the limits of human power by
building a bridge across Hellespont; his destruction of the temples and
the divine images in Greece is one more proof of his impious folly. This
simple scheme of transgression and punishment is however darkened by
a theological complication which will recur in sinister emphasis
throughout Aeschylean drama: Xerxes is as much a victim as sinner, for
he has been tempted to ruin. ‘What mortal man’, sings the chorus early in
the play, ‘shall escape the cunning deceit of a god? . . . For, fawning
kindly on him at first, Delusion leads a mortal astray into the nets . . .’

(9 4 ff).

274 8/. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

In Seven Against Thebes (467) the fate of a city hangs in the balance as
the decisive assault is launched against its walls. The city is saved, but its
defender Eteocles dies killing his brother; heroic defender of the city
though he may be, he is also the heir to a father’s curse and a tainted
heredity reaching back over generations. The nature of his motivation
when, at the climax of the play’s great central scene, he decides to face his
brother at the seventh gate, is complex. But one thing seems certain: his
action is the final manifestation of a curse imposed on Laius as
punishment for his failure to obey Apollo’s command: ‘Die without
issue; save the city’ (Sept. 747-8). Aeschylus here used the trilogy (the
two preceding plays, now lost, were called Tains and Oedipus) to show
the working of the divine will over three generations, its culmination the
extinction of the male line of Laius. He was to exploit trilogic form for
similar ends again, but on a grander scale and with a more reassuring
denouement, in the Oresteia of 458.

The Suppliants (probably produced between 465 and 459) is the first
play of a trilogy which traced the story of the daughters of Danaus from
their acceptance as suppliants at Argos, through the defeat of Argos by
their Egyptian suitors and the forced marriage which followed, to their
murder of their husbands on the wedding night. The refusal of marriage,
an obsessive theme of their lyric odes in the first play, seems to be
specifically reproved by the goddess Aphrodite in a fragment of the last
play (Mette 1 2 5 ), a speech which celebrates the universal power of Eros.
The political element is not absent, since the king of Argos has to face the
danger involved in sheltering suppliants whose enemies may attack his
city — as indeed they do, successfully; the king’s pious action ends in
disaster for him and his city. How this religious problem is resolved we
do not know exactly, but the Suppliants is remarkable for its solemn lyric
evocations of the power of Zeus and the impenetrable mystery of his
will. ‘What the desire of Zeus may be is not easy to track down . . . The
paths of his mind stretch dark and tangled, impervious to sight’ (Suppl.
87-90).

In the Oresteia (458) the themes of the earlier plays are combined with
new elements to produce the intricate patterns of a dramatic world which
recognizes no distinction between the theological and the social, the
mythical and the historical. The curse on the house of Atreus is also the
operation of a primitive system of justice by vengeance; its guarantors
are the Erinyes, terrifying spirits of vengeance personified, who, in the
dilemma posed by Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra, champion the rights
of the mother against the husband, of the blood bond which is the tribal
warrant for private vengeance against the marriage bond which is the
city’s affirmation of the domination of the male. Against the Erinyes
stands Apollo, who claims to speak for a Zeus whose inscrutable will,

TRAGEDY 275

hymned by the chorus of the Agamemnon in some of the greatest lines in
Greek poetry, manifests itself through human crime and suffering to an
end which is unforeseen even by Apollo: the reconciliation of the
Erinyes with the city which, through the court of the Areopagus
convened by Athena, has decided against them, the reconciliation also,
as the closing words of the trilogy proclaim, of all-seeing Zeus and
Destiny.

The trilogy is also a charter myth of the Areopagus and it was
produced at a time when the democratic leaders Ephialtes and Pericles
had recently stripped that august body of its political power, confining
its sphere of action to the judicial. The question of Aeschylus’ stand on
this controversial reform has been much debated but no agreement has
been reached and it seems likely that the original audience did not think
of the play in such terms at all. Aeschylus spurs the audience to think and
to sympathize; he does not tell them what to think. He shows them the
roots of their contemporary institutions in the mythical past, emphasizes
the continuity of their history with the age of gods and heroes and,
leaving the question of Ephialtes’ reforms open (but in such a way that
partisans on either side can feel the dignity of their position enhanced),
he presents his fellow citizens with a vision of advancing Athenian
progress and power. ‘Time as it flows onward’, says Athena to the
Erinyes, ‘will bring ever more honour to these citizens’ (853—4). But it is
honour that has to be won, like the acquittal of Orestes, through that
struggle and suffering which are the will of Zeus ‘who has set mortal men
on the road to right thinking, laid down this law to hold good: Learn by
Suffering’ ( Ag . 176-7).

Prometheus Bound is so anomalous a play in so many respects that
doubts of its Aeschylean authorship, first expressed over a hundred years
ago, are still widespread. There is a fair measure of agreement, however,
that it is a fifth-century tragedy and it is certainly one which must figure
in any discussion of religion. Its characters are all gods, Titans or sea
nymphs with the single exception of Io, a human victim of Zeus,
changed into a heifer by his jealous wife Hera. The play’s delineation of
Zeus as a merciless tyrant seems a world away from the reverent
brooding on the mysteries of his will so characteristic of the other plays.
Zeus, however, is presented to us always from the standpoint of his
opponent; and we know that in the lost second play, Prometheus Released,
a reconciliation takes place between the two great adversaries. And even
in the first play, as Prometheus prophesies the eventual birth of Heracles,
his deliverer, from the line of Io, we note that characteristic Aeschylean
sense of the mystery of the will of Zeus, working through apparent evil
to good.

One of the counts against the authenticity of Prometheus Bound is the

27 6 8 f. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

author’s apparent familiarity with sophistic rhetoric and even sophistic
teaching, for the long speeches which detail the Titan’s gifts to mankind
have been thought to reflect the influence of Protagoras’ famous book on
the development of human civilization. Since Aeschylus died in 456 b.c.,
such influence is, in his case, hardly possible but the younger dramatists,
Sophocles, whose first production at the Dionysia was in 468 and
Euripides, whose debut was in 455, were certainly exposed to and
affected by the questioning, critical attitudes and the new ideas of the
men, all of them non-citizens, who dominated Athenian intellectual
circles in the last half of the century. The older poet, Sophocles, shows
the impact of sophistic thought in a strqng reaction against it: the famous
first stasimon of Antigone, for example, certainly betrays acquaintance
with Protagorean teaching and sketches in unforgettable lines man’s
conquest of his environment; but it concludes with a reminder that he
cannot conquer death, a warning that his ingenuity may lead to evil as
well as to good, and a solemn injunction to respect the justice of the
gods. This tension is a constant in Sophocles’ tragic vision: an admi-
ration for human greatness is combined with sorrow for its inevitable
fall. The confident note of the last scene of the Oresteia, the city launched
on its forward course under divine protection, is never heard again.

Unlike his predecessor who, born when Hippias was tyrant, saw the
establishment of democracy and defended it at Marathon and Salamis,
Sophocles had grown up in the expanding Athens of the Delian League,
which became an empire. He had seen the fulfilment of Athena’s
prophecy in the Eumenides, had indeed played his own part in Athens’
spectacular advance by serving in high office, civil and military. But in
the plays we still possess (most of them dating from the last thirty years
of his long life), the polis, the high point of man’s march to civilization in
the Antigone stasimon ( Ant . 3 5 5-6), is no longer the place of judgement
and reconciliation as in the Oresteia. The polis in Sophocles is seen as a
problem rather than a solution. In Ajax, Philoctetes, Antigone and Oedipus
at Colonus, for example, the hero bitterly opposes the representatives of
the polis (or of the stratos, the polis in arms) and in all four cases the
spokesman for the polis, the Atridae, Odysseus and Creon, are, to say the
least, unsympathetic characters. And in two of the plays, Ajax and
Antigone, the grounds for opposition to the community are religious:
they are the defence of a dead man’s right to burial.

In the case of Ajax we are left in no doubt that his actions and attitudes
are hateful to the gods, for the goddess Athena in person makes this
clear; nevertheless his right to burial is vindicated against the savage
sentence of the two kings. Antigone is never so explicitly disowned by
the gods though she considers herself abandoned by them {Ant. 922-3)
and they allow her to die; yet they assert the rightness of her action

TRAGEDY 277

through the prophet Tiresias and avenge her, as she prayed they would
{Ant. 927—8), by the destruction of Creon’s wife and son. Though both
plays shed an ambiguous light on the character and situation of the hero,
they strongly suggest that there are some areas of conduct for which the
polis cannot prescribe, some spheres in which a higher religious law
prevails. But the will of the gods in Sophocles is never clearly spelled out;
usually it manifests itself through prophecies, divine pronouncements
which, neglected or misinterpreted, are understood too late to affect
action. The will of heaven is a mystery. ‘Since the gods conceal all things
divine’, runs a fragment of a lost Sophoclean play, ‘you will never
understand them, not though you go searching to the ends of the earth’
(fr. 919 TGrF).

There are some aspects of the religious element in Sophoclean tragedy
which seem to stem from sources darker and deeper than the final
Aeschylean vision of civic order based on divine reconciliation. The
focus of his tragedy is often not the community but the lonely, stubborn
protagonist who defies it, recalcitrant to the end, impervious to
persuasion or threat; in the harsh but magnificent intransigence of
Antigone, the vindictive wrath of Ajax, the suicidal obstinacy of
Philoctetes and above all in the terrifying curse old Oedipus pronounces
on his son we can feel something of the awe and terror inspired by hero-
cult, the sacrifices made on the hero’s grave (real or supposed) to placate
and avert his wrath. But hero-cult is not the only archaic belief that finds
expression in Sophoclean tragedy; there is also a remarkable insistence
on a primitive taboo which is repudiated by both Aeschylus and
Euripides, implicitly in the Oresteia and explicitly in the Heracles. This is
the idea of pollution: the ineradicable and communicable impurity of the
man who has shed blood. In Aeschylus, Orestes is particularly tainted,
since the blood is his mother’s; he is instructed by Apollo to purify
himself by means of sacrifices and at Athens makes the claim to Athena
that his hands were clean when he sat in supplication at her image. The
claim is dismissed by the Erinyes but accepted by Athena and the court;
no further mention of pollution is made. In Euripides’ Heracles, the hero,
in a fit of madness sent by Hera, has murdered his wife and children;
Invited to Athens by his friend Theseus he is reluctant to accept because
of the pollution which makes him an outcast from society. Theseus not
only urges purification by sacrifice ( HF 1524) he also, in a line which
‘though stated in pious terms exhibits a new rationalistic spirit’, 1 rejects
the doctrine that pollution could affect the elements. At the end of the
play, when Heracles hesitates to take his hand - ‘I am afraid I may smear
your garments with blood’ (pollution literal as well as symbolic) -
Theseus replies with a contemptuous dismissal of such fears: ‘Wipe it off,

1 G. W. Bond, cd. Euripides, Heracles (Oxford 1981) on 11 . 123 2-4.

2-7% 8 f. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

don’t hold back. I don’t care’ ( HF 1400). But Sophoclean tragedy does
not treat this matter so lightly. When Creon comes out of the palace to
find the blind Oedipus wandering in the light of day, he reproves his
servants fiercely for allowing such an unholy object to remain unco-
vered. Oedipus makes no objection to this estimate of his condition: he
begs to be expelled from Thebes without delay, to be sent to the
wilderness where no one will speak to him (OT 1436-7). Many years
later, at Colonus, when he has come to realize that he bears no moral
responsibility for the actions that have made his name a byword and at a
moment when he knows he is now being guided to his resting place by
the gods who will, in fact, call him by name in the last moments of his life
( OC 1627—8), he still feels the pollution strong upon him. He asks for the
hand of Theseus, who has restored his daughters to him. But this is
followed at once by a shocked renunciation. ‘But what am I saying? How
could I, a man born for misery, wish to touch one with whom there lives
no strain of evils?’ Theseus makes no demur to this; the contrast with the
Euripidean scene, produced some years before, may be deliberate.
Oedipus goes still polluted in the eyes of men to his hero’s grave. In this,
as in so many other aspects of his drama, we can find justification for
Dodds’ perceptive estimate, that Sophocles was ‘the last great exponent
of the archaic world view’. 2

To air on the stage such a radical rejection of belief in pollution as the
words Euripides gave his Theseus was a bold gesture, for such belief was
widespread and deep rooted; it is reflected in Athenian judicial pro-
cedure and legal oratory. But this was not the only aspect of popular
religion which was exposed to criticism in Euripidean drama; even more
radical and frequent is the attack on prophecy, which in Sophocles is
always vindicated, and on human prophets, who in Sophocles are always
presented in an aura of respect, even reverence. Euripidean characters
are apt to dismiss human soothsayers with scornful contempt (e.g. He l.
744—57, I A 956-68), but even divine prophecy does not escape
unscathed. In the Ion, Apollo, the prophetic spokesman of Zeus, is
apparently unable to foresee the failure of his plan to palm his son by
Creusa off on Xuthus, revealing the truth to Creusa only when Ion
reaches Athens ( Ion 71—2); furthermore, the god’s oracle tells Xuthus a
plain lie.

A sceptical attitude towards prophecy, however, was by no means rare
in the last half and especially in the last years of the fifth century.
Thucydides remarks acidly of the many prophecies made about the
length of the war that only one was correct. And Aristophanes in Birds
(959—91) and Knights (996-1095) makes outrageous fun of professional
prophets and their wares. The Euripidean presentation of Apollo in Ion,

2 Dodds 1951 (j 26)49.

TRAGEDY 279

however, is a different matter; whether it is to be taken as a serious
indictment of Apolline prophecy or a light-hearted handling of the god’s
peccadilloes appropriate for a play which in many respects foreshadows
Menandrian comedy, it goes far beyond the norms of popular scepti-
cism. But this does not mean that Euripides was an atheist, still less that
his tragedies denied the existence of the gods, as Aristophanes claimed in
jest ( Tbesm . 450—1), and some modern critics have claimed in all
seriousness. A dramatist who wants to demonstrate the non-existence of
gods does not create such impressive stage presences as the Aphrodite of
Hippolytus , the Poseidon and Athena of Troades, the Lyssa and Iris of
Heracles , and above all, the Dionysus of Baccbae.

Bacchae is not only a Dionysiac Passion Play — a powerful enactment of
the religion’s central mystery, the tearing apart of the god-substitute - it
is also an exploration of the varieties of experience offered by the god and
the wide range of reactions to his cult. It exposed the audience to the
time-serving pliancy of old Cadmus, the hollow professionalism of
Tiresias, the revulsion charged with prurient curiosity of Pentheus, the
god’s smiling passivity and merciless revenge, Agave’s deluded exalta-
tion and her cruel awakening to reality, the paradisial innocence of the
Maenads in the pine-woods and their ferocity when disturbed and, above
all, the revelation, in the magnificent poetry of the choral odes, of the
Dionysiac ecstasy, the abandon of the barefoot night-long dances
(86zff), the savage ‘joy of the living flesh devoured’ ( omopbagon cbarin 138,
tr. E. R. Dodds). This fascination with religious phenomena is character-
istic of Euripides; it surfaces elsewhere in the exquisite prayer to Artemis
of Hippolytus, whose total abstinence from sexual intercourse is a
singular rarity in the pre-Christian world, and in the innocent trust in
Apollo of Ion the Delphic temple servant and the charming naivety of
his morning song as he cleans the approaches to the shrine. Gods are
ubiquitous on the Euripidean stage; five of the extant plays (and one of
the lost) have their prologues delivered by gods (in Alcestis and Troades
two gods appear), and in nine of the extant and two of the fragmentary
plays a god appears in majesty at the end to settle accounts, offer
explanations and predict the future.

These last-minute epiphanies have been severely criticized ever since
Plato made the sarcastic comment that the tragic poets, when they are at
their wits’ end, fall back on the machine and bring in the gods on high
( Crat . 423d). It may be that at the time Plato was writing, such divine
appearances had become a tiresome routine, but it is remarkable that
Aristophanes, who does not miss many Euripidean targets, makes no
similar complaint in the Frogs. In Euripides, in fact, the dens ex macbina is
much more than a convenient device for rescuing the protagonists from
impossible situations and the dramatist from contradictions. Unlike

280 8 f ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

Sophocles, whose play endings are often enigmatic ( Electra is not alone
in this), Euripides seems to have felt the need to compensate for the
abandonment of trilogic form by reinserting his dramatic excerpt in the
mainstream of myth. This could only be done by a character who
foretells the future and so the prophet is usually a god. But these gods do
more than explain and prophesy; they also give directions for the burial
of the dead (. Andromache , Electra, Antiope, Erechtheus) and establish
religious rites: the cult of Hippolytus at Troezen ( Hipp . 1423ft), of
Artemis Tauropolos (IT 145 off) and the Hyakinthides (Erechtheus fr. 65,
74ff, Austin) in Attica.

The gods are a solid reality in Euripidean drama: Euripides’ place of
honour among the atheists in the ancient doxographic tradition must be
due to reliance on passages quoted out of context. For the role these gods
play in the government of the universe and human life is discussed by
Euripidean characters with a freedom and sophistication which owes
much to the philosophical speculation of the age. Hecuba’s address to
Zeus in Troades is a celebrated example: ‘O you’, she says ‘that are the
earth’s support and also have your seat upon the earth, whoever you may
be, for knowledge is beyond our conjecture, Zeus, whether you are
nature’s law of necessity or the mind of man . . .’ (Tro. 884-6). Sometimes
the characters reprove the gods for their cruelty or neglect; similar
sentiments are to be found in the other dramatists too but in Euripides
they are expressed with a particularly uncompromising vehemence.
‘Great god though you are’, says Amphitryon when he sees no hope for
the wife and children of Heracles, son of Zeus, T, a mortal, surpass you in
manly virtue ... You must be a stupid god or unjust right through’ (HF
342, 347). In other plays the gods are called on to show themselves
morally superior to men, in particular, to show mercy. So Cadmus
appeals to Dionysus, ‘Gods should not be like mortals in their passion’
(Ba. 1348), and Hippolytus’ old servant to Aphrodite, ‘gods should be
wiser than mortals’ (Hipp. 1 20). Needless to say, both appeals fall on deaf
ears and though the children of Heracles are saved from the tyrant Lycus,
they are reserved for something worse - to be killed by their own father.

Euripides’ gods are utterly indifferent to human ideals of morality and
justice. Sophocles’ Athena in Ajax exacts a terrible payment from the
hero for his neglect but she bases her conduct on an ethical claim — that
the gods love those who are wise in heart ( sophronas ) and detest evildoers
(Aj. 1 3 2—3), and the intervention of Heracles in Philoctetes is beneficent,
for Philoctetes will win not only health but glory; furthermore Heracles
speaks not only of himself as a model for the hero in his pursuit of
excellence (Phil. 1418—22), but of mankind’s duty to show reverence for
things divine (1441-3). In Antigone the gods, through their prophet
Tiresias, show their approval of her action, and even Oedipus, whose

TRAGEDY

281

destiny in Oedipus Tyrannus seems to raise unanswered questions about
divine justice, is welcomed by the gods in the last play ( OC 1627-8). But
in Euripides the gods demand only one thing of mortals: submission.
Aphrodite cites no justification for her destruction of Hippolytus and
Phaedra other than his neglect of her rites; Dionysus has no mercy on
Cadmus, who tried, at the last moment, to join in his worship. And
Athena in Troades turns against the Achaeans whom she has so far
favoured; for one man’s crime against her left unpunished she joins
Poseidon to destroy the whole Achaean fleet. This play in fact presents
the ironic spectacle of a series of Achaean atrocities which would be
enough, in human eyes, to justify the destruction at sea which awaits
them; the prologue shows, however, that their punishment has nothing
to do with the sacrifice of Polyxena or the appalling murder of the child
Astyanax; the Achaeans will be paying with their lives simply because a
goddess considers herself insulted. It may be that some subtle theologi-
cal point is being made here — the apparently random coincidence of
divine action with human expectations of justice - but no such
explanation offers itself for the inflicting of homicidal madness on
Heracles after the completion of his labours for mankind, or for the
destruction of Hippolytus and Phaedra. Their deaths in fact are
explained as incidental products of an eternal struggle between Aphro-
dite and Artemis ( Hipp . 1327-34), which will produce yet another
human victim when Artemis, in her turn, destroys a favourite of
Aphrodite (Hipp. 1420-2). These gods are like those of the Iliad, who
bargain for the fate of men and cities in their private quarrels (II. iv.30—
63); Euripides rejects all that his predecessors since Homer had done to
reconcile the Olympian gods and human ideas of right and wrong. The
gods exist, his tragedies seem to say, but they are the amoral, elemental
forces which, locked in eternal conflict both outside and inside us, rule
the tragic universe in which we live.

There is another fifth-century poet who appears on the list of ‘atheists’
— Critias, the uncle of Plato, the leading spirit of the Thirty Tyrants.
From a play called Sisyphus our ancient authority (Sextus Empiricus)
quotes forty-two lines of a speech which clearly reflect radical rationalist
thought. It is cast in the form of a sophistic Kulturgeschichte, starting with
the original state of lawless chaos and proceeding to the invention of
laws and punishments. When, however, the laws were evaded by
criminals who acted in secret, some clever man invented fear of the gods,
so that evildoers would have something to fear even if not found out. He
introduced the idea of an immortal spirit who hears and sees everything,
who even knows human intentions. So he ‘concealed the truth with a
false tale, locating the gods where they would cause most fear, in the sky,
the source of thunder and lightning. So, I imagine, someone first

282 8 f. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

persuaded men to think that there was a race of gods’ (Snell, T. 19

TGrF).

The attribution of this fragment to Critias is disputed; it may belong to
a satyr play called Sisyphus which we know was a Euripidean title. 3 But
whoever wrote it, the assumption that it reflects the sentiments of the
poet is of course unjustified. There is a similar speech in the Euripidean
satyr play Cyclops ; the speaker expresses utter contempt for the gods,
Zeus in particular. If this speech were a fragment without context, such
remarks as ‘To eat and drink your fill from day to day — that’s what Zeus
is, to men who can use their heads’ ( Cycl . 337-8) would certainly have
earned Euripides a place in the ancient (and some of the modern)
handbooks as a forerunner of the Cyrenaics and Epicurus. But in the play
the Cyclops is blinded by Odysseus, and Sisyphus, the arch-trickster and
liar of Greek myth, whose punishment in Hades was proverbial, is not
likely to have escaped unscathed in a play produced in the theatre of
Dionysus.

Cyclops , like Sisyphus (whoever its author may have been) was a satyr
play, a burlesque appendage to the tragic poet’s offspring of three serious
plays. Cyclops is our only complete specimen but the papyri have given us
large sections of Sophocles’ Ichneutae ( The Trackers) and smaller frag-
ments of the satyr plays for which Aeschylus was famous in antiquity.
From this material there emerges a picture of an extraordinary dramatic
form: the enactment of a mythical action by characters whose would-be
tragic dignity is undercut by the antics of a chorus of ithyphallic satyrs,
creatures compounded of insatiable greed, carnal lust and abject cowar-
dice. This might seem, at first sight, to be a relic of some original
Dionysiac ritual, piously preserved, but in fact there is good evidence
that it was introduced into the festival around the beginning of the fifth
century by Pratinas, who, Pausanias (11.15.6) tells us, was Aeschylus’
only rival in this remarkable genre. Whatever its origin, it became the
exclusive domain of the tragic poets and though the performance of a
satyr play after the three tragedies must have provided a psychological
transition to the comedy which followed, comedy and satyr play belong
to different spheres.

III. COMEDY

In satyr plays the dancers of the chorus wore not only horse tails and a
mask which combined a snub nose with baldness and a beard but also
tights made of animal-skin equipped with a prosthetic phallus (Fig. 37).
In comedy the phallus, ‘made of leather, hanging down, tipped with red,
thick, a laugh for the children’, as Aristophanes describes it ( Clouds 3 5 8—

3 Cf. Dihle 1977 (j 2 5) 28—42.

COMEDY

283

Fig. 37. Clay figure of a comic actor. (Ber-
lin, StaatlicheMuscen 8823; after M. Bieber,

Die Denkmaler %ur Theatcrwesen im Alter turn
(1920) pi. 69; Bieber 1961 (1 15) fig. 133.)

9), was usually (though not always) attached to the costume of the actors
as well. In satyr plays the poet played off the tragic pretensions of the
mythic world of the actors against the gross animality of the chorus; in
comedy there is no such contrast, it is a world of here and now. The
creatures of the comic poet move through the landscape not of the
mythical past but of fifth-century Athens — the Pnyx, the ecclesia , the
Agora, the Acropolis, with occasional excursions to Hades and Cloud-
cuckoo-land. But though the Athenian setting is familiar, what happens
in it on stage soon leaves reality far behind: an Athenian landowner
makes a separate peace with Sparta, another flies on a giant dung-beetle
up to Olympus to complain to Zeus about the war; the women of Athens
and Sparta force their men to make peace by declaring a sex-strike; two
Athenian adventurers organize the birds to cut the gods off from the
smoke of sacrifice and so force Zeus to surrender his sovereignty. In the
course of these extravaganzas many Athenians seated in the audience
were outrageously slandered and lampooned: prominent statesmen and
literary figures appeared travestied on stage and subjected to scurrilous
abuse. Even the gods did not escape the comic poet’s unwelcome
attentions; the trio of gods who come to negotiate in Birds include a
gluttonous Heracles and a barbarian Triballian god, both of them a great
embarrassment to the chief of mission Poseidon. And Dionysus in Frogs
is presented in his own theatre as a coward and buffoon. Furthermore, in
keeping with the phallus on the actor’s costume, the proceedings were

284 8 f. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

enlivened throughout by explicit sexual and excretory jokes.

About the origins of this remarkable performance we know no more
than we do about the origin of tragedy; in both cases what little
information we have is contradictory. Why tragedy was called goat-song
( trag-oidia ) no one has ever explained satisfactorily, but komos song makes
a kind of sense, for komos is the Greek word for a revel, a riotous
celebration. There were many such occasions in the Greek festival
calendar at which personal lampoons and parody would be the natural
media of spontaneous entertainment, but we do not know of any specific
occasion which could have given rise to the dramatic structure which
meets us in Aristophanes; a core consisting of an agon , a contest between
two adversaries, and a parabasis , a choral address to the audience,
embedded in a series of lively scenes enclosed by a prologue and a danced
exodus.

Comedy was first included in the programme of the Dionysia in 486
b.c. (before that, according to Aristotle, there had been productions by
‘volunteers’ ( ethelontai-. Poet. 1449 b 1_2 )l it was not introduced at the
Lenaea until much later (in or about 442). The only complete plays which
have come down to us are all the work of one man, Aristophanes, and
they were all produced between 424 ( Acharnians ) and 388 ( Plutus ); of the
comedies of his predecessors and competitors we have only fragments.
Coming so late in the history of the genre Aristophanes’ work may have
been atypical: his plays reflect a literary sophistication which, one
suspects, was not characteristic of his rivals; his masterly parodies of
Euripides, for example, speak of an intimate knowledge of his target that
may have provoked one of his competitors to coin the remarkable verb-
form euripidaristophani^on, suggesting that he was as much fascinated as
repelled by the phenomenon he attacked. Sophisticated and literary he
might be, but he was competing in a field where what counted was the
laughter of the audience. Though he complains about the third prize
given to Clouds ( Clouds 5 18-25), he managed to combine the low notes
with the high successfully enough to win first prize with Acharnians
(425), Knights (424) and Frogs (405); and a second prize with Wasps (422),
Peace (421) and Birds (412).

The tragic poets found religious and ethical problems immanent in the
myths with which they worked; they embodied these universal themes in
dramatic patterns which expressed contemporary concern. But though
tragedy could also address social and political issues in general terms, it
avoided specific issues currently under debate and above all specific
personal allusions. Comedy had less to say about theology and theodicy
but it took for its raw material the events of the day and the personalities
of the hour. The Acharnians, produced in a city which had suffered and
was still enduring shortages and inconvenience caused by the annual

COMEDY 285

Spartan invasions, celebrates a hero who makes a separate peace and
enjoys on stage all the delicacies and comforts that the audience can only
dream of; he exonerates the Spartans of responsibility for the war,
asserting, in an outrageous travesty of Athenian war aims, that Pericles
declared war because the Megarians stole two whores belonging to his
mistress Aspasia; he finally exits in drunken high spirits, clutching two
accommodating ladies of the night, while Lamachus, the general, comes
back from a battle with a twisted ankle and a broken head (he had fallen
in a ditch), to lament his lot in Euripidean lyric cliches as he is carted off
to the doctor. Knights, produced in the following year, is a full-scale
attack on Cleon, the political leader, who, like Pericles before him,
maintained such a hold over the popular Assembly that he was in effect in
control of Athenian policy. In the play he is a Paphlagonian slave in the
house of a foolish old man called Demos, but the slave is in fact the
master, since Demos is the dupe of the Paphlagonian’s flattery and is kept
stupidly content with handouts. Two other slaves, whose ‘Spartan cake
made at Pylos’ the Paphlagonian had taken credit for, learn from an
oracle that the leather-seller (Cleon) is to be succeeded by a ‘blood-
sausage seller’ - a figure which of course appears at once ‘as if sent by a
god’ ( Knights 147). Reluctant at first to enter politics because of his lack of
education, but persuaded that even the little he has is a disadvantage, he
takes on Cleon and proves victorious in the agon of vulgar abuse, wild
accusation and disgusting flattery which follows (at one point they both
vie for the privilege of having Demos wipe his fingers on their heads
after he has blown his nose ( Knights 910— 1 1)).

Like Acharnians, Knights is a massive comic offensive against the
current Athenian leadership and its policies. And yet both plays won first
prize. And neither play seems to have undermined popular support for
the war or for Cleon, its chief promoter, who was elected one of the ten
generals not long after the performance of Knights. Nor is there reliable
evidence for attempts at retaliation by the powerful figures who were
targets of the comic poets. 4 To be singled out for abuse in comedy was
evidently something to be expected if you were noteworthy in any way;
it was not to be taken to heart. Comedy was the licensed clown of
Athenian democracy; in its proper place and time its civic and religious
duty was to release its audience from restraints and inhibitions like the
god in whose precinct it was performed. For an hour or two at the end of
the day comedy had licence to turn the world upside-down. Its plots defy

4 Aristophanes claims (or rather his character Dicaeopolis docs) that he was dragged before the
bonk and abused because of his comedy Babjlonians ( Acb . 577-82), but we have only his word for it;
and that has to be weighed against the fact that later in the same play, speaking in his own person
through the chorus, he announces that the Great King believes that Athens will win the war because
they have Aristophanes to advise them and that the Spartan claim to Aegina is simply a manoeuvre
to gain possession of that valuable asset — Aristophanes.

286 if. ATHENIAN RELIGION AND LITERATURE

reality: Dicaeopolis’ separate peace, the sausage-seller’s conquest of
power, Trygaeus’ ascent to heaven to end the war, Pisetaerus’ defeat of
the Olympians and, above all, the revolt of the women led by Lysistrata,
are all events so utterly impossible that their presentation on stage
constitutes no threat whatsoever to established institutions.

It was, however, possible for the comic poet to make a momentary exit
from his fantasy world and speak on social themes in a serious tone. In
the parabasis , a long and elaborate lyric unit in which the chorus
addresses the audience directly, the poet sometimes has his chorus
discuss matters which lie outside the bounds of the comic plot. In one
section of this structure, the epirrhema, a harangue in trochaic tetrameters
spoken in character (young aristocrats in Knights, fierce old men in
Wasps, and so on), the chorus offers advice to the Athenians. Their
recommendations have usually nothing to do with the themes exploited
in the play proper; they consist for the most part of unobjectionable
championship of old-fashioned morals and patriotism. In one play,
however. Frogs of 405, the chorus of mystic initiates calls on the
Athenians to restore their civic rights to those who had been penalized
for their participation (or suspected participation) in the oligarchic coup
of 41 1. We have it on the authority of Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle,
that this advice was so welcome to the Athenians that they took the
unprecedented step of giving the comedy a second performance. But this
example is the exception that proves the rule: the proper function of
comedy was not to advise but to be outrageous. It is the safety-valve of
the emotional pressures generated by life in the polis and, like the reign
of the Lord of Misrule in medieval England or the freedom granted to
slaves at the Roman Saturnalia, it offers a utopian vision of revolution
which serves to reinforce the solidity of the existing order.

Comedy’s treatment of the gods is no more radical in intention than its
abuse of individuals. It is not to be wondered at that gods suffered at its
hands the same indignities as men, for the gods, outside philosophical
circles, were regarded, sometimes with fear and sometimes with affec-
tion, as human beings on a more majestic scale; their passions - love,
hate, pride and anger - were no different from ours, only more
dangerous. From fear and reverence for the gods, even for Dionysus
himself, comedy brought the worshipper a momentary dispensation.
But the medium of release - the actors with their grotesque masks and
phallic appendages, the dancers with their deliberately vulgar choreo-
graphy — was itself a ceremony of worship of the god. ‘The man is
dancing’, runs a fragment of the comic poet Phrynichus (K9), ‘and all’s
well with the god.’

CHAPTER 8_g

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

J. K. DAVIES

The only statement which can be made with security about Athenian
society and economy in the Periclean period is that they were evolving
rapidly but unsystematically. Since very much the same can be said of our
scholarly understanding of those processes, the reader should be warned
that this section must needs be more provisional than most, and is likely
to date rapidly even so.

It may be helpful to explain why. Earlier generations of scholarship on
the subject were (in broad terms) split between two approaches. Some
adopted an antiquarian approach, organized according to the sector of
economic activity or to the legal status and socio-economic functions of
population groups. 1 This approach served essentially as a backdrop to
the political, military, artistic and intellectual history of Athens and the
rest of Greece. Others, more interpretatively inclined, became enmeshed
in the unending debate between those who saw the Greek (including the
Athenian) economy as essentially agrarian and undeveloped, based upon
the largely autarkic farm plus family ( oikos ), and those who consciously
or subconsciously saw the city states in Hanseatic terms, with a
corresponding emphasis on capital, innovation, and market-oriented
production and competition. 2 The post-war debate, having belatedly
absorbed Hasebroek’s fundamental attack of 1928 (a 60) on the latter
view, came to be dominated by the late Sir Moses Finley. For present
purposes the salient features of his approach were three. The first was
methodological, comprising the claim that economic or social institu-
tions and practices cannot be seen in isolation but must be interpreted as
integral parts of the general fabric of a society and its value-systems.
Thus seen, even innovations like banks, or loans on the security of an
identified portion of a property-holding ( apotimemata ), were not what
they prima facie seem to be, inventions to help capital accumulation or
economic growth, but social instruments developed to help meet costly
obligations such as liturgies, dowries, or interest-free loans ( eranoi ) to

1 E.g. Tod 1927 (l 154); Michcll 1940 and 1957 (l ioi); Ehrenberg 1951 (l 34); an approach
deriving ultimately from Boeckh 1840 (l 8).

2 Surveys ofthe debate in Oerte! 1925 (l io5);Gernet 1933 (l j 8); Will 1954 (l 144); Pearson 1957
(l 1 *4); Humphreys 1970(1. 71); Musti 1981 (l 103) 3/f. Recent exponents of each view are Starr 1977
(a i 1 3) and Gschnitzer 1981 (l 65).

287

288

8 ^. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

friends in need . 3 The second feature of Finley’s approach, at once
methodological and substantive, was the assertion that the analysis of
such a society needed to be ‘monocolore’, i.e. that there was a single
system, an ensemble, or a predominant pattern to be detected, and that
whatever did not fit that pattern was a ‘rare exceptional practice’, ‘on the
margins ’. 4 Thirdly and substantively Finley claimed that the prevailing
ideology of Greek — indeed of ancient - society was that of its top social
echelon. Its economic attitudes were those of a non-innovative agrarian
society which erected ‘a wall between the land and liquid capital’ and
made little of entrepreneurship or growth. Its social attitudes likewise
linked landholding with citizenship, status with descent, and dignity
with leisure. For Finley, therefore, Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics, or the
social writings of Xenophon, accurately reflected a cultural-psychologi-
cal framework within which the town was a centre of consumption, not
of production, all echoes of the Hanseatic city-state model were to be
firmly rejected, and the economy was embedded in society . 5

Such views always had their critics , 6 and reassessment is now
gathering pace. Ancient agronomic techniques and strategies, ever more
intensively studied, are being seen as both more complex and more
rational than hitherto. Settlement and landholding patterns, at last the
object of serious attention within the Attic landscape, are being seen to
have generated specific aspects both of the economy and of public
finances. The conceptual distinctions between economy, society and
polity, or between polis as central place and polls as polity imposed upon
landscape, are being used more confidently. Notions that the Athenian
economy, not to mention the wider Greek economy, was a compound of
contradictions, whether of structure or of representations, are being
broached , 7 though their implications have yet to be digested. Fiscal
demands, or the social imperatives of prestige spending, emerge as
generating a system of economic and social interaction which was sui
generis and eludes glibly applied labels. Other approaches from other
newly adjutant disciplines, ranging from palaeobotany to historical
demography, are already under way, so that the debate about ancient
economic and social model-building looks set to continue well into the
currency of this volume and may yet change its mode of discourse
radically. What follows here, therefore, is highly provisional.

Aristotle built his mytho-historical generative model of the polis up
from the association of man, woman and slave in accordance with nature

3 Finley 1 952 (l 56) 38—5 2; Finley 1953 (l 37).

4 References in Davies 1975 (l 28) 101.

5 Best in Finley 1973 (l 39) and 1977 (a 40).

f> E.g. Frederiksen 1975 (l 47); Davies 1975 (l 28); Thompson 1982 (l 133).

7 E.g. Vernant 1965 (a 1 17) (slavery); Humphreys 1970 (l 71) 23 (role of the state).

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

289

within an oikos (household) (Pol. 1.1252b). It is tempting to follow suit,
for obvious reasons. The oikos was the context of action and emotion for
all Athenians and most non-Athenians, for much of their time. It was the
context of much significant cult-practice, ranging from the everyday
through rites de passage to such ancestor worship as was practised. 8 It was
a centre of affective life, though a life clouded by the ideology and reality
of homosexuality, by disparities in age, education, or expectations
between husband and wife, and by a severely practical view of marriage
which saw it mainly as an instrument of child creation and property
transfer. 9 It was above all the context of most human labour, whether
‘outside’ in the fields or with the flocks or ‘within’, washing, weaving,
carding, spinning, cleaning, cooking or nursing: though not self-
sufficient, the oikos was certainly in this period still the primary unit of
production, storage and consumption.

Yet the difficulties of applying Aristotle’s model are extreme. In part it
is a matter of access. Classical Athens has yielded no private archive like
the Zenon archive, the Paston letters or the Montaillou records. 10 The
only substitute, the law-court speeches, do indeed contain much inciden-
tal information and a few illuminating passages such as Lysias 1 or Lysias
xxxii. 1 iff, but they are set pieces, written for those who could pay for
them, and emerge almost by definition from a context where relation-
ships have broken down, so that they cannot be seen as a direct reflection
of normality. The same is true for comedy and even more so for tragedy,
where one can detect preoccupations and ideologies rather than analytic
portraits of reality. 11 Secondly, it is a matter of the rate of change in our
understanding, especially in affairs of law and of female/male relation-
ships within the household. The more the study of the Athenian legal
system emancipates itself from presuppositions derived from Roman
law, the more appropriate it becomes to locate court cases within an
integrative social system, to take seriously the role of juries in forming
and reflecting social norms, or to see law making as a continual process
of accommodating norms to social reality. 12 Though this last perception
is at odds alike with the Athenian assumption that their fundamentally
static laws remained ‘Solonic’ and with the traditional modern approach
of presenting Athenian law as a synchronic corpus, yet the need for
recodification from 411/ 10 onwards (see below, pp. 484-5) suggests

8 Rose 1957 (k 77); Theophr. Char. xvi. with Humphreys 1979 (l 74) 559.

9 Dover 1978 (l 32) and Golden 1984 (l 60) on homosexuality; cf. below, n. 13.

10 One fifth-century letter survives from an Athenian context (Wilhelm 1904(0 178)); a few brief
messages on potsherds in Agora xxi B1-B9 (with SEG xxvi 67). Household accounts were cast (Ar.
Clouds 19—20; Plut. Per. 16.5-6); none survives.

11 Humphreys 1979(1-74) 56 iff= Humphreys 1983 (a 67) i8ff.

12 Consider the evolution from MacDowcll 1963 (d 5 5), Harrison 1968-71 (a 59) and MacDowell
1978 (a 81) to Osborne 1985 (l 107), Humphreys 1985 (l 75, l 76) and 1986 (l 77).

2go

Sg. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

what isolated evidence confirms, that substantive law was changing
comparatively fast in this period, yielding precisely the sort of ‘promis-
cuous heap of legislation’ which Aristotle was later to deplore (Pol.
1324b 5—6). A comparable change is affecting our ways of describing
male-female relationships, as it becomes ever clearer how far previous
study of Athenian society has yielded descriptions based almost entirely
on male-created documentation and biased accordingly towards the
actions and attitudes of men. 13 Techniques for redressing the balance,
created in the last twenty years, are beginning to let us see, for example,
what the public (male) / private (female) division meant, both generally
and in the use of space within the house, what (considerable) powers
went with a dowry, or what roles in production and wealth creation, not
least managerial, within and outside the house were assumed by
women. 14 An eventual systematic treatment of the female-male relation-
ship as a component of Athenian society will probably obliterate much
current Athenian social history, but its chronological focus will have to
be the semi-visible century from 430 to 3 20 rather than the near-darkness
of the Periclean period.

A third and closely related difficulty arises from the imprecision of
Athenian terminology. The term oikos denoted at once ‘family’ or
‘lineage’, ‘household’ and ‘property-unit’, and could shift its meaning
even within the same legal text (e.g. Dem. xliii. 75). In each area of
meaning it competed with other terms such as genos (‘lineage’ or ‘issue’),
ousia (‘beingness’, ‘property’), oikia (‘house’ or ‘building’, but a virtual
synonym of oikos), or kleros (‘allotted estate’, ‘property-holding inherited
as a unit’), even apart from other property terms such as chorion or agros , 15
Behind this linguistic oscillation lay a political ambiguity, in that the
polity’s fiscal or military or political relationship was not primarily with
the oikos but with the individual male person, albeit one whose role in the
polity and obligation towards it (his telos) varied with the size of the oikos
he commanded.

The fourth difficulty, closely linked to the third, was the demographic
instability of oikoi. Athenian law and custom had long since come down
in favour of partible inheritance and of a prioritized capacity to inherit
among all members of the bilateral kindred up to a specified degree. Of

13 The general bibliography on ‘women’s studies’ grows exponentially. Germane to the specific
context are Wolff 1944 (l 145); Lacey 1968 (l 190); de Ste Croix 1970 (l 121); Thompson 1972 (l
132); Schaps 1975 (l 1 26); Pomeroy 1976 (a 99); Fisher 1976 (l 43) jff; Schaps 1977 (l i 27); Gould
1980(1.61); Isager 1981 (l 78); Humphreys 1983 (a 67), esp. chs. 3-4; Just 1985 (l86); Powell 1988 (a
99 A ) 337-82; Foxhall 1989 (l 45); Just 1990 (l 87).

14 Respectively Humphreys 1977-8 (d 39) and Walker 1983 (1 175); Foxhall 1989 (l 45) 3 2fF;
Pomeroy 1990 (c 78 a).

15 Conspectus in Pritchett 1956 (c 1 56) 261—76; Osborne 1985 (l 106) 15—22; MacDowell 1989 (l
98). Finley’s promised study of property terminology in Greek authors (l 36, 246 n. 9) never
appeared.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

2 9 I

the two possible ‘strategies of heirship’ 16 reactive to such customs and to
a likely low life expectancy, one, that of family limitation, increased the
risk of patriline discontinuity. Solon’s inheritance law, permitting
adoption in such cases and requiring the archon to ensure that oikoi do
not become empty, went against the interest of collaterals in consolidat-
ing property, was often evaded in practice by the adoption of close kin,
was administered only with difficulty (as the numerous known suits
contesting adoptions bear witness), and must derive from an interest
perceived by the central polity, probably for military needs, in retaining
the maximum number of minimally viable kleroi. The other strategy, that
of maximizing family size, must have predominated in fifth-century
Athens if the evidence for population increase can be trusted (below, pp.
296 fl). In the absence of any significant degree of long-term co-
ownership of property among kin, 17 it presumably led to repeated
property division like that of Bouselos’ estate among his five sons in just
this period (Dem. xliii. i 9). Even if we allow for subsequent intra-family
inheritance from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew annulling
some such divisions, it has to be conceded that, ideal though it may have
been, the notion of the family oikos/kleros descending intact through the
generations can rarely have been a reality. At best the well-attested use of
family given names in alternate generations will have provided a certain
cognitive and emotional continuity. 18

A fifth difficulty is that the oikos was very likely in retreat, socially and
economically, in the Periclean period. Economically an increasing
amount of production was being carried on outside the oikos framework.
Admittedly, some contexts, such as the potters’ workshops or black-
smiths’ forges depicted in some genre red-figure paintings, 19 may have
been quasi -oikoi, with slaves resident as family members and with no
spatial differentiation between residence and workplace. However, by
now some slaves were certainly separated from their owners, ‘living
apart’ (^copis oiKowres), especially in the newly urbanized areas of
Athens and Piraeus (below, p. 298) and in effect forming oikoi by
themselves. Still further removed from tradition were the larger-scale
ergasteria (workshops) of slave craftsmen and labourers which are well
attested in the silver-mining area and in Athens and Piraeus. By the time
we see them, in the speeches of Lysias (xii.8 and 12), they are spatially
separate from the oikia and could be far larger than any household
known from Classical Greece.

Socially, too, the oikos was being ever more weakened by circum-
stances or circumscribed by political action. Since 510, Cleisthenes’

16 Sailares 1991 (l 123) 204-5. 17 Biscardi 1956 (l 6) collects what evidence there is.

18 Humphreys 1980 (k 42).

19 Webster 1972 (1 177) 8—9, 248; Osborne 1987 (l 108) 1 14-15 (street of herm-sculptors).

2 C)Z 8g. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

restructuring of the polity, the outlawing of tyranny, the unpredictable
effect of the ostracism law, and the growth in public finances had
combined to ensure that oikos could not again overshadow polis. Pericles’
citizenship law of 45 1 jo, restricting the citizen’s choice of wife to women
born of citizen-status parents (chapter 4 and p. 299 below), reinforced
that message, as did the official use of the demotic or tribal affiliation
rather than patronymic. So too did the laws of the 450s which
formalized, and thereby specified and restricted, the powers and privi-
leges of certain aristocratic oikoi in respect of various cults and festivals
(below, p. 300), as did the laws of various dates from Solon onwards
which emphasized public funerary rituals while severely curtailing the
costs and the likely social impact of all private commemoration of the
dead. 20 Even the physical dispersal of many thousands of citizens abroad
in the colonies and cleruchies of the 440s (above, pp. 127 ff) will have
weakened the effective everyday solidarity of many oikoi.

These facts and movements created a paradox. The oikos carried much
the same sort of fundamental social load as households and families carry
in most complex agrarian societies, and was enshrined as such in law and
ideology. Yet the more specifically segmented and circumscribed it was
as part of the polity, the more artificial and unstable it became. Either as a
result, or as the consequence of parallel but independent movements in
society, social action tended to become the province of larger or more
fluid units. To these we now turn.

Central in the spectrum of these larger units was the deme. Settlement in
nucleated villages had clearly long been the norm in the Attic land-
scape, 21 though the size of settlement varied enormously according to
the extent of the territory, the ruggedness, fertility, and ecological
diversity of the terrain, and differential access to resources and communi-
cations. Not all of these units were of equal antiquity. Some, such as the
so-called ‘twelve cities of Cecrops’, were Mycenaean foundations, others
dated from the internal colonization of Attica in the ninth and eighth
centuries, while yet others, such as the settlements in the mining area
which were less dependent on agriculture, were undergoing rapid
growth in just our period.

To describe the demes thus is to view them as natural realities,
emanating from the logic of humans exploiting a landscape. However,
like oikoi, they had also come to function as the segmental components of
a polity. The landscape was split up among them; the citizen body

20 Jacoby 1944 (k 43); Richter 1961 (1 1 30) 57C Kurtz and Boardman 1971 (k 54); Stupperich 1977
(1 1 61); Humphreys 1980 (k 42).

21 Osborne 1985 (l 106) and Whitehead 1986 (d 108) have transformed scholarly understanding
of this level of Athenian society. On settlement patterns cf. also Osborne 1987 (l 108) 63 f; Halstead
1987 (l 64); Hodkinson 1988 (l 68).

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 293

comprised precisely those who were listed on the deme registers; and all,
most importantly, were on the same level constitutionally. Even what
had by now become the built-up walled area of Athens was composed of
a number of demes, which were long-established villages in their own
right and remained demes, each with its own corporate life. In stark
contrast to some Hellenistic and much medieval experience, there was no
city corporation as such and no formalized relationship between city and
country, while the privileged position of the urban centre was reduced to
a minimum. 22

These demes were miniature republics, issuing documents, handling
finances, copying the institutions of the wider polis, enjoying political
life of probably a highly personal kind (to judge from later speeches such
as Dem. lvii), and running some cults and festivals such as the rural
Dionysia. All the same, demes as incorporated segments of the polity
were only two generations old in 450: indeed, though they had clearly
taken root by then, yet to judge from the use of demotics the degree to
which men (especially those of aristocratic pretensions) identified with
their deme varied and was a socio-political issue in this period. 23
Furthermore, demes did not manage all local cults or control all matters
of local importance, for some at least of the latter remained with the
older-established and more shadowy phratriai (brotherhoods), whose
role, importance, and relationship to the demes in the Periclean and later
periods are very hard to assess. The problem is partly to establish how far
they too reflected any sense of locality. Some phratries do seem to have
been roughly coterminous, socially and geographically, with demes,
while the membership of others was already scattered through several
demes by 5 08/7. Some, again, were — or had been - dominated by a single
lineage which may have given its usually patronymic name to the larger
unit, and even well into the fourth century the procedures of admission
to a phratry continued to coexist with, and to influence, deme decisions
on admitting members to the deme register. 24 In this respect they went
on being live organizations, with their own cults, lands and revenues,
which fulfilled certain limited social functions of ceremonial, of rites de
passage, and of community membership. Their affairs were worth
regulating in the mid-fifth century if the law compelling them to admit
certain categories to membership is rightly so dated, 25 and other
evidence shows them generating sub-groups ( thiasoi , cult-fraternities)
within themselves for reasons not at all clear.

22 Humphreys 1972 (l 72), especially on the contrast with Alexandria.

23 Whitehead 1986 (d 108) 71.

24 Wade-Gery 1931 (l 1 38); Jeanmaire 1939(1, 82) 133—44; Latte 1941 (l 92); Andrewes 1961 (d
1); Lewis 1963 (d 50); Thompson 1968 (l i 3 i); Davies 1981 (d 18) io6f; lto 1981 (l 79); lto 1983 (l
79A); lto 1988 (l 79B).

25 Philochorus FGrH 328 f 35, with Andrewes 1961 (d i).

2 94

8g. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

Apart from demes and phratries, three other subdivisions of the
citizen body need notice. One group was vestigial: the four ‘Ionic’ tribes
of which the phratries were (or had been made) segments still survived
on paper, with tribal officials called phylobasileis (tribal kings) active in
cult but little else. Almost as unimportant, surprisingly, were the thirty
trittyes ( CAH iv 2 3 i2ff) which were used for certain military and cultic
purposes but otherwise seem not to have taken root in society, probably
because a citizen’s profile of affiliations was complicated enough without
them. 26 In contrast, the ten Cleisthenic tribes had taken root in
spectacular fashion. Whereas there is good reason to suppose that they
were created as entities to bring together men from various areas of
Attica, to promote the cohesion of a (by Greek standards) exceptionally
large polity, to avoid recourse to formal or informal perioecic status for
outlying villages, and to reduce the danger of regional polarizations, by
the mid-fifth century these functions had been supplemented by others.
They were at once brigading units for the army; mobilization mecha-
nisms for the navy; bases for competing teams of runners, singers and
dancers at various festivals; constituencies for elections to magistracies,
imprimis the ten generals; constituencies for the selection by lot of
administrative officials of all kinds, from the grandiose and inter-
national-sounding hellenotamiai to the most humdrum market super-
visors; and cult-groups of limited but real significance. 27 In these ways
both the ‘natural’ units (the demes) and the ‘artificial’ units (the new
tribes) into which they were grouped had come to function not merely as
formal segments of the polity but also as communities with identities and
lives of their own, bearing a genuine functional load.

Even so, however — such were the intricacies of Athenian society-
they were inadequate by themselves. Complementary to them (or
neutralizing them), less segmented, more fluid, and perhaps more
immediately reflective of social needs, there had developed an untidy
network of informal groups. For some the focus was a cult, especially of
gods or aspects of gods who had not (yet) been adopted by the polity,
exercised though it was in the fifth century to bring as many such cults as
possible under public supervision and control. For others the focus was a
network of kinship relationships, visible to us above all when mobi-
lized for support in legal contexts. 28 For others again the focus was a
person, whose pbiloi or betairoi (friends, companions) the group
members were. Mostly aristocratic in ethos, sometimes with a core of
kinship, these quasi-Masonic groups encapsulated such vestigial patro-

26 Phylobasileis'. Sokolowski 1962(0 165)110. ioa.3i~46. Trittyes: IG i 3 1117—51, with Traill 1986
(d 98A) 93-1 13 (military); IG i* 255 and 258.30 (cult).

27 For specific aspects, Jordan 1975 (d 41) (navy); Davies 1967 (d 17) (festivals); Kron 1976 (k
53); Rorroff 1978 (k 78) 205 n. 46; Kearns 1985 (k 49) (cults).

28 Osborne 1985 (l 106) 127—53; Humphreys 1986(1. 77).

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 295

nage relationships as had survived the advent of large-scale public pay in
the 460s and 450s. They may sometimes have been purely social, as the
synousiastai (companions) of Lysias vm are represented as being, while
others, such as the kakodaimonistai of an early fourth-century Hellfire
Club (Lys. f 53) may have strayed onto the louche and hybristic
borderline of cult. Yet others, such as those which surface in the 440s
round Thucydides son of Melesias (Plut. Per. 1 1.2), in 41 5 (Andoc. 1) or
in 4 1 1 (Thuc. viii. 5 4.4), were potentially if not actively political, usually
in an oligarchical direction. 29 It may not be chance that such groups
became visible in a period when both polity and society were changing
fast, since they could evidently provide the support ‘towards lawsuits
and magistracies’ (Thuc. vm.54.4) which an earlier generation had
found in kin groups or in locality groups, but their roots lie well back in
the symposiac culture of the Archaic period whose values they tended to
share.

Socially, then, effective action was transcending the boundaries of
oikos and locality, and had probably long done so for the better-off
minority. Economically the same was true. For the peasant whose estate,
though maybe consisting of scattered plots, lay within the boundaries of
one deme, deme life corresponded to reality. For those caught in 508
with property in two or more demes, 30 it did not. Moreover, irrespective
of whether land in Attica was freely alienable in this period or of whether
a market in land really existed, 31 the normal workings of inheritance, of
dowry, and of the occasional public sale of confiscated land by the poletai
(sellers) in the two generations since 508 can only have reinforced the
tendency to own property in several demes. By 414 such a pattern of
ownership had come to predominate in the property holdings (mostly,
significantly, of the better-off) which were being sold off by the poletai
after the Hermokopidae and profanation affairs of 41 5. 32

What is more, other aspects of the economic behaviour of the upper or
propertied class will have strengthened the process of detachment from
locality.

(1) As is now being belatedly appreciated, the poletai documents of 414
reveal the ownership of much real property overseas. The processes of
acquisition are far from clear, since some of the estates concerned are
much too large to be the kleroi of cleruchs or colonists (nor are they in the
right places), but the movement must be assumed to have been in train
from the mid-century on. 33

(2) The urban growth of Athens and Piraeus in the fifth century must

29 Calhoun 1913 (d 10); Sartori 1957 (d 84); Connor 1971 (d 16); Aurenche 1974 (d 4); Strauss
1987 (d 93) ch. 1; Millett 1989 (l ioia). 30 Whitehead 1986 (d 108) 7 5 f.

31 Fine 1951 (l 35); Finley 1953 (l 37); Cassola 1965 (l 22); Bourriot 1976 (l 12), 727 ff.

32 M-L 79: IG i 3 421-30: Lewis 1966(0 51). 33 Davies 1981 (l 30) 55-60.

296 8 g. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

have accommodated freedmen, slaves and foreigners at least as much as
citizens. The resultant demand for accommodation from those who
could not legally buy or own real property provoked investment in
landlord-owned synoikiai (multiple dwellings), built inevitably where the
demand was and not where the landlord’s deme was, as well as
investment in the new-style standard ‘estate’ houses of Piraeus which
may or may not have been owner-occupied. 34

(3) Of other forms of land exploitation, quarries seem to have remained
a matter of small-scale concern and local ownership, but the silver mines
at Laurium presented a very different picture. However imperfectly the
rate of coining reflected the rate of extraction of ore, and however
obscure the routes by which the investment in land, labour and
installations was recouped by individuals, nevertheless the epigraphic
documentation from 367/6 onwards confirms the meagre fifth-century
evidence in requiring the inference that citizens from all over Attica who
had capital to spare came to own land or installations in the mining
area. 35

(4) Lastly, and notwithstanding Thucydides’ statement that in 43 1 most
Athenians lived in the countryside (11.14.2), there seems to have been a
clear tendency among politicians and the wealthy towards the acqui-
sition of a town house 36 for obvious reasons of convenience.

To some extent such transformations, occurring within a settled,
hitherto village-based agrarian society, were part of a long-term evolu-
tionary process not confined to Greece or indeed to the Mediterranean
seaboard. What multiplied their effect and their visibility was demo-
graphic change and change in the pattern of settlement. They were
independently generated, the latter above all by military requirements
and by the consequences of successful empire-building, but they
interacted with the changes already sketched ever more extensively from
the early fifth century onwards. The first of these inputs was population
growth, where the fact is clear enough but the figures remain opaque and
controversial in spite of much recent work. 37 It will be best simply to

34 Graham 1966 (1 71); Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1 166) 173-85; Davies 1981 (l 30) 5 1 n.
25; Hoepfner and Schwandner 1986 (1 77): Pesando 1987 (l i i 5 a ).

35 Momigliano 1932 (l 102) (fiscal arrangements); Crosby 1950 (c 127); Hopper 1953 (l 69);
Crosby 1957 (c 128); Mosse 1962 (d 60) 85—96; Hopper 1968 (l 70); LaufFer 1979 (l 93); Osborne
1985 (l 106) 103-26.

36 Davies 1981 (l 30) 5 3—5 . Add, for the fifth century, houses of Callias III of Alopece in Piraeus
and Mclite (Davies 1971 (l 27) 260), of Ischomachus in the city, with an estate in the country (Xen.
Oec. 1 1.14ft), and of Themistocles of Phrearrhioi in Melite (Plut. Them. 22.2).

37 Basic thread of debate in Gomme 193 3 (a 48); Gomme, HCT 1 246f; Jones 195 7 (d 40) 161-80;
Gomme 1959 (a 50); Meiggs 1964 (a 86); Patterson 1981 (d 65) 51—56; Hansen 1986 (a 56); Garnsey
1988 (l 54) 1 13—17; Sallares 1991 (l 123) 5 1-60.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 297

state the limits of uncertainty. The two fixed points for our purposes are
508/7 and 431. In and after the former year the adult male citizen
population, having probably suffered both diminution and supplemen-
tation, seems to have been reckoned at the time as being of the order of

30.000. 38 What multiplier is then applied to yield a total head count
within citizen families is debated: a multiplier of three would yield

90.000, of four 120,000. To that figure — already implying a high
population per arable km 2 — it would be imprudent to add substantially,
since such free non-citizens as were resident in Attica in 508 may have
been largely incorporated in the citizen body as neopolitai , 39 and since the
then slave population cannot even be guessed at.

Two generations later, in spring 431, Pericles was made by Thucy-
dides to claim that Athens had available 13,000 (citizen) hoplites of
military age, an unspecified number ‘in the garrisons’ and a further

16.000 as a reserve force of ‘oldest and youngest’ and such metics
(resident aliens) as were hoplites (11. 13.6-7). Since we hear of 3,000
metic hoplites later the same year (n.31.2), and since there were also

1.000 (citizen) cavalry (11.13.8; Ar. Ach. 225) besides the 200 horse-
archers and 1 ,600 archers ( who may not all have been citizens), on these
figures there were at an absolute minimum 27,000 adult male citizens
who were of military age (18-59) and of hoplite status or above in 43 1.
However interpreted or emended, such figures are incompatible with a
static citizen population, even if we note a later reference to an ambition
to ‘heavy-arm the thetes’, presumably via cleruchic land-assignments
(Antiphon f 61). Short of emendation or of forced interpretation of the
texts, we must assume a steep rise in citizen numbers since 508/7. Such
indirect or qualitative evidence as there is for the fifth century confirms
the assumption.

What may matter even more is the size of the non-citizen population.
If many or most metics were migrants escaping from landless poverty on
Aegean islands and elsewhere, behind the 3 ,000 or more who had hoplite
status in 43 1 will have stood at least enough to equal or exceed the 1 0,000
known from 3 17. 40 Likewise, when Xenophon implies that before the
Spartan occupation of Decelea in 4 1 3 there were over 1 0,000 slaves in the
silver mines {Vect. iv.24-5), other more specific numbers (iv.14— 1 5) give
substance to his suspiciously round figure, as does Thucydides’ figure
(vn.27.5) of 20,000 for those who deserted, probably in 413 itself after
the Spartan occupation of Decelea. To seek further precision on slave
numbers in the mid-fifth century is futile, since the degree to which

38 Mciggs 1964 (a 86), based on Hdt. v-97-2 and vm.65.4. Doubts in Hansen 1986 (a 56) 26.

39 Whitehead 1977 (l 141) 145-7; Davies *977-8 (l 29); CAH iv 2 304.

40 Whitehead 1977 (l 141) 97f; Duncan-Jones 1980 (a 50); Hansen 1981 (a 55) 25.

298

8 ^. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

Athens was or became a slave society is again best examined from within
a later chronological period. 41 Nevertheless, we are left with an impres-
sion (it is no more) of a massive and rapid increase in the total population
of Attica, largely due to immigration whether forcible or voluntary.
Directly or indirectly, the process had far-reaching consequences, which
can only be sketched here.

First and simplest, and in increasingly pointed contrast to Sparta,
there crystallized an atmosphere of openness and of receptivity to
foreign influences. It was perceptible as much in language ([Xen.]
Ath. Pol. 2.8), or in cult, as reflected by the importation and semi-
naturalization of foreign gods, 42 as in the taste for imported foodstuffs
and manufactured goods which the comic poets caricatured but illumi-
nated. 43 Thucydides could make Athenian openness into a motif of the
Funeral Speech (n.39.1), not unjustly, for the fifth-century Athenian
source material shows very little trace of xenophobia.

A second consequence was the urbanization of Athens and of Piraeus.
The two developments were separate but parallel, contemporary and
interdependent, each combining a deliberate act of planned creation with
the cumulative effect of thousands of individual decisions. At Athens the
deliberate act was the building of the Themistoclean wall in winter
479/8 44 for military and political reasons. Once created, albeit as
Fluchtburg, the circuit became the locus of two processes, (a) infill
between the closely adjacent nuclei of the existing villages wholly or
partly enclosed within it (Kydathenaion, Melite, Boutadai, Skamboni-
dai, Kollytos and Kerameis) (see p. 207, Fig. 24), and (b) the more
intensive use of existing housing stock. 45 Though there were still vacant
parts of the city in 43 1, they could not accommodate all the then country
population (Thuc. 11.17.1 and 3): we must assume that most of the
intramural area had been developed, if only as a barrio.

Likewise at Piraeus the planned act is datable, the organic process not
so. The latter had already yielded a substantial settlement by 508 if its
likely later quota of councillors (8) reflects Cleisthenic circumstances, so
that its fortification by Themistocles, in 493/2 and very soon after 479
(Thuc. 1.93.3—8), and initial layout ( IG i 3 1 101-15) were far from being

41 From the rapidly moving bibliography a basic orientation relevant to the present period in
Ehrenberg 195 1 (l 34) 165-91; Jones 1957 (d 40) 10-17, 76-9; Finley 1960 (l 38); Mosse 1962 (d 60)
179—215; Vidal-Naquet and Carriere-Hergavault in l 23; Jameson 1977-8 (l 80); Mosse and
Mactoux in l 24; Brockmeyer 1979 (l 17) iojff; Garlan et al . in l 5 2; Finley 1980 (a 42) 67ff, 93IT; de
Ste Croix 1981 (a 109) 133—74; Wiedemann 1981 (l 143); Finley 1982 (l 42); Wood 1983 (l 146);
Osborne 1985 (l 106) in; Hansen 1986 (a 56) 30?; Wood 1988 (l 147); Garlan 1988 (l 50).

42 Notably Bendis ( IG i 3 136), Isis, and the various cults attested in the silver-mining area.
Ehrenberg 1951 (l 34) 268-70; Nilsson 1967 (k 69) 831-9; Lauffer 1979 (l 93).

43 Hermippos f 63 K-A; Ehrenberg 195 r (l 34) 136-40.

44 Thuc. 1.89.3—93.6; Boersma 1970 (1 23) 44-6, 154 no. 7; Lawrence 1979 (1 96) passim.

45 Pritchett 1956 (c 156) 268 ( synoikiai ); Kolb 1984 (1 93) 77ff; Roberts 1984 (a 106) 1 7ff.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 299

ex nihilo. The difficulty lies in dating the various subsequent plannings
and public works in the port and in blending them with Hippodamus’
career, so that at present little but a general picture of demographic
consolidation in the mid-century can be inferred. 46

A third consequence was the evolution of ‘metic’ status and the
redefinition of citizen status, processes which were certainly linked in
time and political climate. The fixed point has to be Pericles’ citizenship
law of 451/0, which provided that any man who was not born of citizen
father and mother should not participate in the city ( Ath . Pol. 26. 4). 47 If
we leave aside consequential problems of detail, such as the subsequent
status of bastards or the practical difficulty of defining a citizen woman in
the absence of any formal process of recognition within the deme, 48 the
main debate has been whether the law was directed (1) against the
foreign wives of aristocrats such as Cimon, or (2) more broadly against
the rapid enlargement of the citizen body as demes adlected (corruptly or
otherwise) the sons of Athenian women by non-Athenian men, or (3)
more broadly still against the usurpation of citizen privileges by non-
Athenian men. Ath. Pol's own explanation (‘because of the number of
the citizens’), for what it is worth, suggests (2) or (3), as does a tradition
that in 445/4, on the occasion of a distribution of corn gifted by the
Egyptian king, 4,760 men were convicted as improperly enrolled. 49 So
too does a consideration of the growing value of citizen status, both
within and outside Attica, once Ephialtes’ revolution had enhanced
access to magistracies, courts, command positions, pay for public office
and windfall distributions. The close parallel is with the gradual
separation of Roman citizen status from Latin status in the early second
century b.c., which likewise reflected the growth after the second Punic
War in the importance and privileges of Roman citizen status within
Italy.

The law of 45 1/0 was significant in two further respects. As a public
enactment it was one of a series of laws and decrees of the Periclean
period which showed the polity intervening in the affairs of its consti-
tuent parts. Whether in specifying the powers and duties of individual

46 Gommc, HCT i 261—70; Martin 195 1 (1 105) 358-61; Bocrsma 1970 (1 23) 37^ 46-50; Martin
1974 (i 107) 106-10; Kolb 1984 (1 93) i i6ff; Hocpfncr and Schwandner 1986 (1 77); Traill 1986 (d
98 a) iff (deme-quota); Garland 1987 (l 5 1) 5 8-61. It would help considerably if we knew when the
local government of the town was taken out of the demesmen’s hands and replaced by a ‘demarch to
Piraeus’ appointed by the Assembly {Ath. Pol. 54.8), but we do not, and cannot safely infer from the
creation by the Thirty of ten ‘archontes of Piraeus’ {Ath. Pol. 35.1, 39.6) that the change predated
404-

47 Whitehead 1977(1. 14 1) 149-5 1, Rhodes 1981 (c 83) 331-4, and Patterson 1981 (065) are now
the basis for discussion; see also Walters 1983 (l 139), and above, pp. 76-7, 292.

48 Harrison 1968 (a 59) 61-78; Humphreys 1974 (l 73); MacDowell 1976 (l 97); Rhodes 1978 (l
120); Walters 1983 (l 139) 316-20; Hansen 1986 (a 56) 73-6.

49 Philochorus FGrH 328 f 119; Plut. Per. 37.4; Whitehead 1977 (l 14 1) 151.

300

8 g. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

gene , such as the Kerykes and Eumolpidae ( IG i 3 6c) or the Praxiergidae
( IG i 3 7), or in issuing general rules about what phratries or (as in 45 1/0)
demes could and could not do, the state was regulating, or transmuting
into written public form, what had perhaps hitherto been custom and
practice, and thereby was reaffirming its primacy, or sovereignty if the
word can be safely used. 50 Secondly, as a statement of political values
(whether generally agreed or as a product of controversy we do not
know) the law of 45 1/0 enshrined the Athenian polity’s preference for
maximizing equality among the members of a clearly defined citizen
body rather than permitting the emergence of a spectrum of statuses
with permeable boundaries. It is not far-fetched to see it as a reaffirma-
tion of the decision of 508/7 not to envisage perioikoi or other kinds of
isopoliteia within Attica, or even of the Solonian decision not to allow
Athens to become a society of serfs and serf-masters.

Given such a reaffirmation, and given the influx which has to be
presumed, the status of the largely immigrant, free, non-citizen residents
of Attica was having to be regularized, in ways only patchily visible. 51
We have again one fixed point, in that the term ‘metic’ was being
formally used for them before 460 (IG i 3 244c, line 8), possibly in the 470s
if the Themistoclean measure quoted in Diod. xi.43.3 as giving them tax-
exemption can be trusted: that its informal use, which goes back into the
late sixth century, is noticeably frequent in late Aeschylus 52 suggests that
their growing presence and status was on the current agenda. Since other
components of the status, e.g. participation in public festivals such as the
Panathenaea (by 458), the ability to act as choregos at the Lenaea (not
before 440), liability to infantry service (by 431), or deme-residence
designation (by 414) are mostly in place by 431 (with the notable
exception of the metic tax), its crystallization must have been a process of
the Periclean period. However caustically, one has to admire the
Athenian polity’s ability to have the best of both worlds, by attracting
the metics’ skills and manpower while tapping their wealth for public
benefit and continuing to deny them access to landowning or to the
political process.

A fourth and last major consequence of population growth was a
significant extra pressure on food supply. That the pressure was felt is
generally agreed, but the responses to it are a matter of much current
debate. The traditional view has been that, as in the fourth century, so a
fortiori in the fifth century when population levels were higher, much
grain came to be imported from overseas; that the routes of Athenian
expansion abroad from the early sixth century (Sigeum) and the early

50 Philochorus FGrH 328 f 35, with Andre wes 1961 (d i). This is not the place to broach the
broader debate about the usefulness of the concept of ‘sovereignty*.

51 Whitehead 1977 (l 141) 140-54. 52 IG i 3 1357; Whitehead 1977 (l 141) 346,

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

301

fifth century (Lemnos, Imbros, Scyros) through to the developed arche
(Black Sea, Egypt, Thessaly, Sicily) were directed at least in part to
controlling first the routes and then the sources of supply; and that every
effort was made to manipulate the shippers and traders in ways favouring
Athenian interests. Simultaneously, it is argued, emigration was being
encouraged, especially of the landless, or little-landed, to Athenian
colonies and cleruchies. 53 More recently, however, doubt has been cast
on the calculations purporting to show a large annual gap between the
likely production of cereals in fifth-century Attica and the likely demand.
Instead, it is now argued, the demand for imported corn developed only
in the post-Persian War period, while the increased need was met as
much by expedients such as (i) the intensification of land use, which used
all available land including the marginal or iast’ lands ( eschatiai ); (ii) the
increased use of human or animal fertilizers, irrigation and cereal / pulse /
legume rotation (or alternation) rather than bare fallowing; (iii) the
integration of cereal cropping with animal husbandry and arboriculture
in complex interlocking ways; (iv) the use of all available labour (family,
slaves, hired hands) to maximize the yield of the market-gardening end
of primary production; and (v) the adoption of new and more productive
strains of crops. 54 Since this is currently one of the fastest moving areas
of ancient historical studies, no statement here can have long-term
validity. A sensible interim response is to recognize in broad terms that
the Periclean strategy of retreat behind the Long Walls in 431, so far
from reflecting a weakened commitment to Attica and its productive
capacity in the face of readily available imports, placed in jeopardy that
primary sector of the economy into which much effort, investment and
innovation had been committed in the previous fifty years.

The various developments which have just been described impinged
upon Attica as an entity, and are not best seen at the level of oikos or
deme. Together with the large nucleus of non-agricultural non-citizen
workers in the silver-mining area, the two evolving large towns, Athens
and Piraeus, complementary in function and deliberately linked physi-
cally since the 450s, represented a new pattern of settlement, superim-
posed upon the older pattern which had been locally and agriculturally
determined. At the same time, the growth in non-citizen numbers,
whether slave or free, had prompted a sharpening of status divisions

53 Select references to tom munis opinio in Garnsey 1 98 5 (1- 5 3) 62 n. 1 ; also Seager 1 966 (d 86) and
Reed 1 980 (l i 1 9) (shippers and traders); M-L 49 = 1 C i 3 46.43-6 (colonies, with Andrewes 1 978 (d
3) undermining Plut. Per. 1 1.6); Brunt 1966 (e i 3) and Gauthier 1973 (e 30) (cleruchies).

M Ehrenberg 195 1 (l 34) 77-82(1); Lewis 1973 (l 94) 210-1 2 (i); Pecirka 1973 (l 1 1 5) (i); Jameson
<977-8 (l 80) (iv); Burford Cooper 1977-8 (l 19) (iv); Sartre 1979 (l 125) (i); Foxhall and Forbes

1982 (l 46) (ii), (iii); Wood 1983 (l 146) (iv); Owens 1983 (l 110) (ii); Garnsey 1985 (l 3 3); Osborne

1983 (l 106) (i); Halstead 1987 (l 64) (i); Garnsey 1988 (l 54)89-106; Hodkinson 1988 (l 68) (ii), (iii),
(v); Sallares 1991 (l 123) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv).

302 Sg. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

such that the local or segmental divisions of the citizen body came to be
secondary to the collective of all ‘Athenian men’. We therefore now need
to identify a third level.

It was this wider stage which provided the locus for certain forms of
purposive economic and social behaviour. That some forms were old-
established, while others were of recent growth or were still emergent,
led to tensions which Aristophanes above all was to document in the
ensuing decades; indeed it is hard to stand back from his portrayal of the
‘new’ music, the ‘new’ education, etc. far enough to judge how much
represented a real long-term shift in behaviour or mentalites and how
much was evanescent froth. It may be clearest to begin with what is
palpable innovation, and then to try to measure its impact on existing
patterns of action.

Three economic innovations stand out: the market, the new types of
capital accumulation, and the escalation of the public economy. The
formative stages of the emergence of the market have already been traced
in general Greek terms (above, p. 42). How far it had by now advanced in
Periclean Athens is debatable, for we lack evidence which could help,
such as a dated sequence through the fifth century of quantified min tings
of small denomination Athenian coinage, and have instead evidence
which helps less than it should. Plutarch’s report that Pericles sold the
yearly produce of his estates in bulk and bought what was needed from
the Agora (Plut. Per. 16.4) gives no hint of its credentials, is placed
within an anachronistic context of ‘just wealth’ and restrained money
making, and leaves opaque the (to us) primary question whether
Pericles’ behaviour was typical or avant garde. Likewise, though at
Piraeus Pericles’ corn-stoa and the layout of the Agora itself 55 must
reflect market activity, there is notably little fifth-century evidence of
comparable buildings in or near the Athenian Agora. 56 We are,
strangely, on safer ground with the evidence from Old Comedy, which
overwhelmingly depicts a retail market in fully developed form by the
420s, and which has to be taken at face value even if Aristophanes was
right in 425 to make Dikaiopolis contrast the hucksters of the Agora
with the domestic mode of production in his deme: 57 that a special set of
officials, the ‘market supervisors’, was well established by then is proof

55 Boersma 1970 (1 25) 74, 213 no. 87; Martin 1974(1 107) 104.

56 The South Stoa of the late fifth century (Boersma 1970 (1 23) 89^ 219 no. 97) is the first likely
candidate, but the credentials of its commercial use are uncertain (Thompson and Wycherley 1972 (1
166) 76 n. 216). General survey of theskimpy evidence, ibid. 170-3, with Ussher’s note on Ar. Heel.
686. Nothing relevant can be safely predicated of earlier buildings of uncertain character (e.g.
Boersma 1970 (1 23) 226-32 nos. 109—20), and other fifth-century stoas (of the Herms; Poikile;
Basileios) had political-administrative, not commercial, uses.

57 Ar. Aeh. 33-6; but is this economic reality or literary topos ? Cf. Ehrenberg 1951 (l 34) 1 1 3—20
for the general picture.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 30}

enough. 58 The least that can be said is that by the 420s, if not several
decades earlier, increased purchasing power, urbanization, and the
growth of an under-class without access to landownership (though not
without access to land-leasing 59 ) had generated a significant retail market
sector.

The second area of economic innovation, capital accumulation, can be
sketched more briefly, for its newer forms (banks, bottomry loans) have
been noticed already (above, p. 24), and its older forms (hoards; interest-
bearing loans; 60 and interest-free loans ( eranoi ) allowing the small cash
resources of individuals to be pooled for a single larger-scale demand)
were well established by the Periclean period. The problem is to decide
what such ways of putting private capital to work amount to. The fact of
their development makes Athenian society capitalist only in the minimal
structural sense that certain customs and institutions would not have
functioned unless capital sums could be assembled — up to 2,000—3,000
drachmae for a dowry in high society or for a bottomry loan. These are
large sums even for an economy which was generating its millionaire
equivalents and into which the Laurium mines were injecting new
bullion at a substantial rate. Yet they were all assemblages for one
occasion or one enterprise rather than for enterprises of indefinite
duration, for repeated activity, expected to deliver a periodic dividend to
shareholders, of which there is no trace now or later in Athenian society.
Likewise, in the motivational sense, the profit-seeking deployment of
capital was a palpable fact, ranging from the small-time loan shark to the
nabobs who bought slaves and set them to work in the silver mines in the
expectation of a steady income from their apophorai . 61 It was certainly not
they whose ideas lay behind Aristotle’s principled disapproval of
unlimited money-making in Politics 1. Here as elsewhere we must accept
that the same society encapsulated incompatible value-systems within
itself. There did not have to be a single predominant pattern, and the
rapidly shifting society of mid-fifth century Athens is precisely the
wrong place to find such a pattern.

There remains the public economy. The title of August Bockh’s
Staatsbausbaltung der Athener notwithstanding, there is debate whether
‘public economy’ is the right phrase, for it could be taken to imply that
both in analytic terms and in terms of contemporary perceptions there
were clear divisions between ‘community’ and ‘polity’, or between

M For the agoranomoi , Ath. Pol . 5 1.1, with Rhodes ad loc.

59 IG i 3 252 (lease); IG i 3 422.200, 213 ( misthosis ); Lys. vn.4— 10 (metics leasing land); IG 11 2 10
(metic georgoi). In general Osborne 1988 (l 109).

60 Note M-L 5 3 = IG i 3 248 for (not quite certainly interest-bearing) loans by a deme (Rhamnous)
to individuals in the 440s; IG i 3 258, with Behrend 1970 (l 3).

61 References to loan -sharks (tf^/w/a/tf/) in Ehrenberg 1951 (l 34) 23 3; to apophorai in Andoc. 1.38
and Xen. Vect. iv.14-1 5. In general Thompson 1982 (l i 33).

8 g. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

3°4

‘society’ and ‘the state’, but it is not transparent that fifth-century Athens
knew such distinctions. The idea structure was rather that all citizens
were basically shareholders in a company - oi p.eTex ovre s tt)s noXiTelas,
‘those who have a share of the polity’. 62 The argument whether all had an
equal share or held shares proportional to their merits (wealth, strength,
military capability or whatever) served indeed to differentiate egalitarian
from selectivist views of the community, and was to resurface violently
in 41 1, but the four Solonian tele (not quite ‘property-classes’) were a
long-established way of bridging the divergence by encapsulating the
principle ‘from each according to his means’. Hence not only did
differential obligations derive from differentiated resources, but also
their performance (as also that of the specialized subset, liturgies) was an
honour, not a tax or a statutory requirement imposed by ‘the state’ as a
conceptually separate entity: that the political entity which we call
‘Athens’ was called in Greek ‘the Athenians’ is not chance. Given that
essential principle, it was only those outside the polity, who had no share
in it, who needed to differentiate between society and the polity; those
within shared in good things (distributions of silver or of corn, for
example), in power, in obligations, and in catastrophes alike.

It is this value-structure which makes it so hard to decide which
activities and transactions count as part of the ‘public economy’, for even
payments to jurors or to magistrates could be seen as the (re)distribution
to shareholders of some of the income of community activity. So too, at
the extreme, could the gains of empire be thus seen, ranging as they did
from the territories overseas which became cleruchic land assignments
to the monies accruing via tribute and booty which ultimately became
Athene’s property and were either used on prestige display projects
(especially the temples) or kept as a massive reserve. Even if we cannot
take as contemporary or reliable the framework of debate on these
monies which is presented in Plutarch’s 'Pericles , 63 ‘economy’ and ‘public
economy’ appear to be as much welded together conceptually in the
phrase emmisthos polls (‘the whole city in receipt of public pay’) as they are
inseparable operationally when we try to assess the multiplier effect
deriving from the influx of these monies. Paradoxically, the conceptual
separation which was perceived lay within what we would call the public
economy, between ‘public monies’ proper ( 8 -rjp, 6 aia ) and ‘sacred monies’
(lepa). It may be best to acknowledge that a clear reconstruction of fifth-
century Athenian thought and practice in this area is not yet to hand. 64

All the same, a shift both functional and conceptual is unmistakable.
Functionally, by the 450s if not earlier, the scale of monies passing

62 Patterson 1981 (l i 13), quoting Atb.Pol. 26.3 and Thuc.11.40. 2.

63 Plut. Per. 12, with Andrewes 1978 (d 3).

M Cf. meanwhile Lewis 1990 (a 77A). The word ootos, itself fifth-century official Attic ( 1 G i 3
52.16, 253.13), provides yet a further category.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 305

through the hands of the administrators of collective bodies, from
hellenotamiai to demarchs, had become such as to rupture any sense of
continuity with household management: genuine taxes, with tax-farmers
to match, had proliferated by the 420s, 65 and publicity, audit, accountabi-
lity, new and larger management groups, and fierce penalties for
defalcation had become the norm. 66 Conceptually, too, the language
about public revenues attributed to Pericles in spring 43 1 (Thuc. n. 1 3.3)
reveals the shift completed, while most scholars agree that by then the
Athenian citizen hoplite soldiers had followed their poorer counterparts
in the fleet by no longer serving by property class from their own
resources (albeit with a ration allowance) but instead by being assimi-
lated to mercenaries in their relationship to the state as paymaster. 67

Lastly, social innovations, which are if anything even more elusive: at
least three, however, are salient, clearly influencing action and discourse
at the political level. First, for all citizens and many non-citizens, there
was more opportunity for participating in large crowd activity. Festivals
such as the Dionysia or the Panathenaea which provided spectacle,
colour, drama and mass participation gained ground and new resources;
juries, the Council of Five Hundred, and above all the Assembly itself
daily and visibly reinforced awareness of the existence and cohesion of
the collective of ‘all Athenians’, to the point where those who chose not
to participate became thereby, and paradoxically, exposed. 68 Secondly,
the skills needed in order to command attention and respect in such
contexts were shifting the nature and composition of the political class
away from the gentlemanly virtues and towards a professionalism in
oratorical, fiscal and administrative affairs which both increased the gap
between the politicians and the rest and stimulated the need to bridge it,
imprimis by self-presentation as ‘friend of the people’. 69 Thirdly, that
professionalism, together with the sheer impetus of Athenian fiscal and
military resources, was rendering Athens’ wealthy elite larger, wealthier,
and more open in recruitment. Indeed, the one single paradox which
makes Athenian society so hard to encapsulate in a brief description is
that that elite, outward-looking, ambitious, not fundamentally at logger-
heads with itself or its common people, and busy through the Periclean
period in consolidating Athenian domination in the Aegean and beyond,
co-existed with, and emerged from, a society which remained (like its
landscape and polity) small-scale, complex, intricate, and embedded in
agrarian rhythms.

65 Ar. Ach. 896; Wasps 65 8-9; Peace 850; Ecd. 1007; Plut. Ale. 5; Andoc. 1. 1 3 3-4 for tax-farming.
Bockh 1886 (l 9) 1 405—14 remains the best systematic treatment.

66 Recent surveys by Tolbert Roberts 1982 (d 98) and Ober 1989 (d 61) 327^

67 Pritchett 1971—85 (a ioi) 1 7-29; Rhodes 1981 (c 83) 306.

68 Thuc. 11. 40. 2; Carter 1986 (l 20).

69 Kennedy 1963 (j 57); Connor 1971 (d 16).

CHAPTER 8 h

ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

M. OSTWALD

I. THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

‘Because of the greatness of our city there is an influx of all things from
the entire world, with the result that the enjoyment of goods produced at
home is no more familiar to us than the produce of other men’ (Thuc.
11.38.2). Pericles could not have spoken these words before the second
half of the fifth century. The Persian Wars, and especially the Persian
occupation in 480/79 b.c., had destroyed whatever splendour had made
Athens attractive to foreigners in the sixth century. 1 The buildings on
the Acropolis, including the Old Temple of Athena erected under
Pisistratus and the Old Parthenon, a marble structure to which an earlier
poros temple may have given way shortly after Marathon, and the
vibrant archaic sculptures of kouroi and kora 't which archaeologists have
recovered for us, were no longer visible after the Persian holocaust. With
the exception of Simonides of Ceos, who briefly returned to Athens
about the time of Marathon, and of Pindar, who is said to have received
some training in Athens late in the sixth century and celebrated the
Pythian victory won by the Alcmaeonid Megacles shortly after his
ostracism in 486 {Pjtb. vn), 2 we know of no literary or intellectual figure
whose visit is recorded. There was no interruption in the production of
tragedy at the City Dionysia, and comedy was added in 486; whether they
lured a significant number of foreign visitors to Athens we do not know.
The Panathenaic festival, however, is likely to have continued to attract
some competitors and visitors from abroad, 3 and there was no break in
the manufacture and painting of Attic vases, whose superb craftsman-
ship and artistry guaranteed continued export, especially to Etruria. 4

The victories at Salamis and Mycale had raised the prestige of Athens
to equal that of Sparta among the Greeks. Yet it was not until the
successes of the Delian League under Cimon’s leadership in the 460s that

1 Thompson 1981 (d 95) 343— 55, esp. 344-5- 2 See Lesky 1966 (j 65) 184-5 ant ^ 190-1*

3 The evidence needs to be treated with caution since it comes exclusively from the spread of the
so-called ‘Panathenaic’ amphorae, whose production continued without major disruptions after the
sixth century; see especially Gardiner 19 12(1 66 a) 179-93, esp. 184-7; Amyx 1958 (1 ia) 1 78-86, esp.
180-3; Boardman 1974(1 16) 167-77. 4 Webster 1972 (1 177) 286-95.

306

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND 307

political prominence laid the foundation for a new cultural resurgence,
and it was not until the treasury of the League was transferred from
Delos to Athens in 454 that, with the beginning ofimperial rule, Athens
became the focal point of cultural activity in the Hellenic world.

The groundwork for this had been laid by Themistocles’ creation of
the Athenian navy and of Piraeus as its harbour in the late 480s. Though
primarily motivated by military considerations, these achievements
could not fail to have a stimulating effect on the development of trade.
According to Diodorus (xi.43.3),

he persuaded the people to construct each year twenty new triremes to add to the
fleet, and to grant metics and skilled craftsmen tax exemption, so that large
numbers should come to the city from overseas from all quarters and provide a
handy supply of more skills; for he judged both these policies to be conducive to
building up a sea power.

Although the historical accuracy of some of these statements is open to
doubt, 5 there can be no question that Themistocles’ naval policy opened
the gates to many foreigners who knew that there would be a place for
them not only in the construction of the fleet but also in the reconstruc-
tion of Athens after the Persians had left. That they were made to feel
welcome is attested by friendly references to metics in the plays of
Aeschylus. 6 Few obstacles seem to have been put in the way of their
settlement in Athens, if our evidence, which comes mainly from the
fourth century, can be taken as a guide to their status in the fifth. They
had to pay a special tax, the metoikion, they needed a prostates to represent
them at law, they did not have the right to hold magistracies and attend
meetings of Council and Assembly, and they could not acquire land or
houses without special privilege. But they enjoyed the protection of the
law and could engage in lucrative activities such as manufacture and
industry, commerce and banking, and they freely mingled with all layers
of Athenian society. 7

When the one-sixtieth part of the tribute paid by the allies went no
longer to Delian Apollo but to Athena, the influx of foreigners and with
it Athenian prosperity will have increased still further. Evidence for this
may be seen in the enactment of Pericles’ citizenship law of 45 1 /o b.c.,
only a few years after the transfer of the League treasury from Delos to
Athens, which henceforth reserved citizen rights to offspring of two
Athenian parents. 8 Whatever its purpose may have been, this law would
not have been enacted if the influx of metics had not been regarded as

5 See Whitehead 1977 (l 14 i) 148-9. 6 Whitehead 1977 (l 14 i) 55-6.

7 Whitehead 1977 (l T41) 148—59; Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977 (L4) 99— tor; Levy 1987 (l 93A)
47-67.

8 Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.4; Plut. Per. 37.2-5; Ael. VH vi.io, Suda s.v. 677/107701.77 rdv. For a full
discussion, see Patterson 1981 (l i 13); cf. also Walters 1983 (l 139) 314-36.

308 8 h. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

constituting a significant threat to the rights of Athenians (see above,
pp. 299-300). The measure did not, however, affect the right of for-
eigners to reside in Athens, and it did not appreciably stem further
immigration. Absolute numbers cannot be computed, but if we can trust
the Old Oligarch (1.12) their numbers were large and they enjoyed the
same freedoms as did native Athenians. According to recent calculations
they constituted about 40 per cent of the free population of Athens at the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 9 which may have been close to fifty
thousand men, women and children. This ratio is corroborated for the
period 409—405 by the accounts of the construction of the Erechtheum,
which shows that metics contributed about 3 9 per cent to the workforce,
while citizens contributed only 24 per cent and slaves 19 per cent. 10 Less
indicative of specific numbers, but, nevertheless, attesting that they were
considerable, are two occasions, one toward the end of the Peloponne-
sian War and the other soon thereafter, on which metics are said to have
been enticed by the promise of citizenship to fight alongside Athenian
citizens. The first of these was before the battle of Arginusae, the other
when Thrasybulus rallied some nine hundred of them to his side against
the Thirty, promising them isoteleia (taxation equal to that of an Athenian
citizen) and trying unsuccessfully to obtain citizen rights for them after
his victory. 1 1 However liberally they were treated in social and economic
matters, access to political life was made difficult for them.

Since metics were barred from ownership of land, trade, commerce
and industry were the main occupations in which they engaged. Again,
most of our evidence comes from the fourth century, 12 but for the fifth
century the Erechtheum accounts inform us that metics worked as
sculptors in stone, woodcarvers, carpenters, sawyers, joiners, painters,
gilders, and as unskilled labourers, while we learn from the decree of
401/0, which rewarded foreigners who had helped liberate Athens from
the Thirty (IG 11 2 iob), that there were among them several farmers, a
cook, a carpenter, a muleteer, a builder, a gardener, an ass driver, an oil
merchant, a nut seller, a bath maker (?), a baker, a fuller, hired workers, a
statuette maker, etc. As far as industrialists are concerned, we know most
about Cephalus, who was enticed by Pericles to leave his native Syracuse
for Athens. He lived there peacefully for thirty years and grew prosper-
ous from a shield factory which employed 120 slaves (Lys. 11.4, 19). The
respect he commanded and his high standing in Athenian society are
vividly portrayed at the opening of Plato’s Republic, where he is host in

9 Duncan-Jones 1980 (l 33) 10 1-9. More cautious and agnostic about numbers is Hansen 1981 (a
55) 19-32, esp. 23-4.

10 IG i 3 474-9 as interpreted by Randall 1953 (l 1 18) 199-210, esp. 201-3.

11 Xen. Hell. 1 6.24, Diod. xni.97.1; Xen. Hell. 11.4.25 and Arist. Atb. Pol. 40.2 with Osborne
1982 (d 63) 26-43.

12 See Whitehead 1977(1. 141) 1 16-21, and Levy 1987(1. 9 3 a) 55-60.

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND 509

his home in the Piraeus to Plato’s brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus,
members of an old aristocratic family, to Cleitophon who was to become
prominent in Athenian politics on the side of Theramenes, to the Sophist
Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, and of course to Socrates. 13

The career of Cephalus’ son Lysias illustrates how far a metic could be
involved in the social and cultural life of Athens, and even in its political
life — short of becoming a citizen, even though he may have enjoyed
Athenian citizenship for a brief span after the overthrow of the Thirty. 14
Not only did he write forensic speeches, many on political issues, to be
delivered by Athenian clients in law courts which, as a metic, he could
not address in person, but he actively supported the opponents of the
Thirty from his refuge in Megara by supplying them with money,
weapons and men. Of his extant speeches only his prosecution of
Eratosthenes (xii) seems to have been delivered by Lysias himself, and
that during the brief period in which he enjoyed citizen rights.

Other instances of participation by metics and foreigners on the
fringes of political life in Athens are less constructive. According to
Thucydides (vi.28.1), metics figured prominently in denouncing partici-
pants in the desecrations on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition in 4 1 5 , and
there is evidence that at least four rich and well-connected aliens were
implicated in the parodies of the Mysteries at that time. 15 Some political
assassinations are attributed to foreigners: if the story is true that
Ephialtes was killed by Aristodicus of Tanagra, we are almost certainly
dealing with a hired killer; 16 this is not likely to have been the case with
the men credited with the murder of Phrynichus upon his return from
the embassy to Sparta in the autumn of 41 1 : the fact that Thrasybulus of
Calydonia, Apollodorus of Megara, and some others were publicly
honoured for their deed under the restored democracy shows that they
were believed to have acted in the best interest of Athens and not for
personal gain. 17 A further selfless political act in the interest of Athens is
attributed by Thucydides (vm.92.8) to Thucydides of Pharsalus, a
proxenos of Athens, who interposed himself between the troops of the
Four Hundred and their hoplite opponents in the Piraeus in 411/10.
Evidently, metics and other foreigners were capable of feelings for
Athens which matched or even surpassed those of many citizens.

The influences exerted by two known metics on the political life of

13 The bronze-seller Sosicrates, who is recorded as choregos in comedy for c . 400 without
patronymic or demotic, may well have been another prominent metic; see Hesp. 40 (1971) 256 (no.
4) -

14 The most reliable information on Lysias’ life comes from his speech Against Eratosthenes (xii);
less reliable, though more detailed, is [Plut.] X orat.: Lysias ( — Mor. 835C-836D).

15 Teucrus, Cephisodorus, Hephaestodorus and Poulytion; see Aurenche 1974 (d 4) 109-10 and
1 1 3 *

16 Arist. Ath. Pol. 25.4, cited by Plut. Per. 10.7-8. Ant. v.68 says that the assassin was never

found, cf. Diod. XK.77.6. 17 Lys. xm.70-3; Lycurg. Leoc. 1 12; M-L 85 with pp. 262-3.

3 IO

8 h. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

Athens were of a more indirect nature. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and
Aspasia of Miletus, both closely associated with Pericles’ personal life,
are said to have made considerable contributions to his policies.
Anaxagoras spent at least twenty years (probably the years 456/5-437/6)
at Athens. 18 What prompted him to move there when he did is difficult to
surmise, since Athens did not yet have any tradition of philosophical
activity. Indeed, Anaxagoras is said to have transplanted philosophy
from Ionia to Athens and the earliest Athenian philosopher, Archelaus,
is said to have been his pupil. 19 Under what circumstances his close
relationship with Pericles developed is also unknown. Certain is that it
existed and that Anaxagoras’ influence on the statesman was believed to
be so great that political opponents sought to undermine Pericles’
authority by prosecuting Anaxagoras for impiety. 20 We are equally ill-
informed about the circumstances under which Aspasia became Pericles’
mistress in the early 440s. Had she come from Miletus alone in order to
take up residence in Athens or had Pericles brought her there? If the
former, what had attracted her to Athens? We cannot answer these
intriguing questions. Her political influence on Pericles is attested
primarily by Plutarch (Per. 24, 25.1), who makes her responsible for
Athens’ siding with Miletus against Samos in 441, and it is parodied by
Aristophanes’ account of the cause of the Peloponnesian War ( Ach . 5 26-
3 2). It is also indicated by the tradition that, as in the case of Anaxagoras,
Pericles’ political enemies veiled an attack on him by prosecuting her for
impiety (Plut. Per. 32.1, 5).

The number of transient visitors from abroad attracted to Athens
during the heyday of empire will have been greater than that of foreign
residents. The arrangements for the payment of tribute alone will have
brought many allies to the city, especially at the time of the Great
Panathenaic festival when the amount of tribute would normally be
assessed, and at the annual celebration of the City Dionysia in late
March— early April when it was collected and, according to Isocrates
(vm.82), publicly displayed in the theatre. 21 The occasions were well
chosen for their propaganda value: great throngs of foreigners came to
Athens to attend the games and recitations of the Panathenaea and the
performances of tragedy and comedy at the City Dionysia (see above,
p. 261). There was also other business which brought foreigners to
Athens throughout the year: the Athenians had reserved to themselves
jurisdiction in many cases involving their subject allies, compelling them

18 Mansfeld 1979 (j 76) 39 — 69 and 1980 (j 76) 17-95.

19 Anaxagoras 59 a 7 (D-K). 20 Mansfeld 1980 (j 76) 76-84.

21 For the assessment, see [Xen.j Alb. Pol. 3.5; M— L 69 with commentary; for the collection, see
Ar. Ach . 504-6 with scholion on 504; M— L 46 and 68. In general, see Meiggs 1972 (e 5 3) 234-5 4, esp.
237 and 240, and Will 1972 (a i 26) 181-3.

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND 3 1 1

to present themselves for trials in Athens. The economic effects of this
are summed up by the Old Oligarch (1.17-18):

Further, the Athenian people derive the following profit from the fact that trials
for allies are held in Athens. In the first place, the revenue from the 1 per cent tax
in the Piraeus increases; secondly, if anyone has lodgings to let he will do better;
so will anyone who can let a team or a slave for pay; also town criers are better off
for visits from the allies. In addition, if the allies did not come for their trials they
would show respect only to those Athenians who sail out to them, generals,
trierarchs and ambassadors. But as it is, each individual ally is compelled to be
deferential to the Athenian people, inasmuch as he recognizes that he has come
to Athens where judicial proceedings are in the hands of none other than the
people, which is the law at Athens. He is compelled to petition in the courts and
to grasp the hand of anyone who comes in. So for that reason the allies have
rather become slaves of the Athenian people.

Several of the foreign ambassadors who came to the imperial city on
behalf of their own states found kindred spirits among the Athenians,
especially among the upper-class intellectuals. We are best informed
about Gorgias’ embassy to Athens in 427 in order to request help for his
native Leontini against Syracuse. The influence of this visit is immorta-
lized by the dialogue which Plato named after him, and, in addition, we
learn that he gave public performances ( epideixeis ) of his rhetorical skills
and made some money by instruction to young Athenians. 22 Similarly,
Prodicus of Ceos is said to have not only impressed the Council with his
power of speech when he came as an ambassador, but also enriched
himself by public performances and private instruction (PI. Hp. Ma.
282c). In the case of Hippias we are told only that he was sent by his
native Elis on many embassies, especially to Sparta (PI. Hp. Ma. 28iab),
but that does not exclude the possibility that he also visited Athens in an
official capacity. His influence there is attested by two Platonic dialogues
which bear his name and by Xenophon’s report of a discussion in which
he got involved with Socrates {Mem. iv.4.5-25); his admiration for the
intellectual life of Athens is eloquently expressed in Plato’s Protagoras
(337d).

The most constant and visible impact of transient strangers upon
Athens, however, has been left by traders who brought to Athens the
goods of which Pericles boasts in the passage with which we opened this
section. ‘Whatever delicacies there are,’ says the Old Oligarch (2.7), ‘in
Sicily or Italy, in Cyprus or Egypt, in Lydia, Pontus, the Peloponnese, or
any other land, are all concentrated in Athens because of her control of
the sea.’ Mock-heroic dactyls from a comedy produced by Hermippus in
the 420s tells us what these delicacies were (fr. 6} K-A):

22 Diod. x111.5j.1-5, cf. Thuc. ni. 86.3; PI. Hp. Ma. 282b.

3 1 2

8 h. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

from Cyrene sylphium stalks and oxhides, from the Hellespont tunny and salt-
fish, from Italy salt and ribs of beef . . . Syracuse offers port and cheese . . . from
Egypt sailcloth and raw materials for ropes, from Syria frankincense. Fair Crete
sends cypress wood for the gods, Libya plentiful ivory to buy, and Rhodes
raisins and figs sweet as dreams; from Euboea come pears and big apples; slaves
from Phrygia, mercenaries from Arcadia. Pagasae provides slaves with or
without tattoos, and the Paphlagonians dates that come from Zeus and shiny
almonds . . . Phoenicia supplies the fruit of the date-palm and fine wheat-flour,
Carthage rugs and cushions of many colours.

Through her empire and control of the sea the world had indeed come to
Athens’ doorstep.

II. RELIGION AND EMPIRE

The religious consequences of the ties of common Ionian kinship which
made the allies willingly acquiesce in Athenian leadership at the
founding of the Delian League (Thuc. 1.95.5, 96.1) were skilfully
exploited by Athens after the transfer of the League treasury from Delos
to Athens in 454 to secure imperial control over the allies. Athena now
replaced Apollo as recipient of the tribute, which was assessed every
fourth year at the Great Panathenaea and was annually collected at the
Great (or City) Dionysia (see above, p. 261). Sanctuaries to ‘Athena
mistress of Athens’ (. Athena Atherton medeousa ) appear in Samos, Cos,
Chalcis and probably Colophon as an affirmation of both kinship and
dependence, and a shrine to the sons of Ion ‘from Athens’ as the
eponymous progenitors of the four Ionian tribes is found in Samos. 23
Participation in the religious aspects of the celebration of the two great
festivals is expected of the allies. After their revolt had been crushed in
453/2, the people of Erythrae were obliged to contribute only grain to
the Great Panathenaea; but six years later, by the time Cleinias proposed
his decree on the collection of the tribute, all allies were required on pain
of penalty to despatch a cow and a panoply. 24 The same requirement in
the decree authorizing the establishment of a colony at Brea c. 445
implies, and its repetition in Thudippus’ decree of 425/4 makes explicit,
that this contribution was envisaged as being made by colonists to the
mother-city: its purpose was, therefore, to tighten the bond between
Athens and her subject allies. 25 A similar purpose was served by the
obligation to send a phallus to the celebration of the Dionysia which,
though it is attested only for the colony at Brea, may well have been
imposed also in other colonies. 26

Late in the Archidamian War, the first-fruit offerings ( aparchat ),

23 Barron 1964 (e 7) 35-48; Meiggs 1972(653)295-6. 24 M-L 40.2-4, and 46.41-3.

25 M-L 49. 1 1 — 1 2, and 69. 5 5—8. Cf. Schol. Ar. Clouds 586.

26 M-L 49. 1 2 withHerter 1958 (k 41) 1704. Cf. for the fourth century the decree in S. Accame, La
lega Ateniese del secolo iv a. C. (Rome, 1941) 250, lines 2-6.

RELIGION AND EMPIRE 3 T 3

offered to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis by the Athenians ‘accord-
ing to ancestral custom and the oracle from Delphi’, became obligatory
also for the allies, and at the same time other Greeks are invited to
despatch them. 27 Clearly, this constitutes an attempt not only to tie the
allies more closely to Athens but also to give the Eleusinian cult a
panhellenic dimension with Athens at the centre. The success of the
attempt is attested by Isocrates’ report (iv Paneg. 3 1) that first-fruits were
still being sent to Eleusis by most Greek cities in the fourth century.

The religious life of Athens was also enriched, spontaneously and less
fostered by political pressures, by the importation of cults on the part of
foreign settlers who had made the imperial city their home (see above,
pp. 261—2). The oldest and best known of these importations is the cult
of Bendis, a Thracian goddess brought by Thracian settlers into the
Piraeus. 28 She must have been privately worshipped by Thracian metics
as early as the Periclean period (Cratinus, fr. 8 5 K— A), but her official
recognition by the state is not likely to have come until the early days of
the Peloponnesian War, stimulated perhaps by the attempt of Athens to
cultivate good relations with the Thracian potentate Sitalces (Thuc.
11. 29). 29 It will have been about this time that a temple to her was erected
at Munichia (Xen. Hell. 11.4.11). A festival in her honour in which
Athenians also participated was inaugurated on the grand scale on which
we know it from the opening of Plato’s Republic (1, 327a, 328a) with a
torch-race on horseback and nocturnal festivities about 41 3/1 2. 30

The cult of Asclepius, on the other hand, does not seem to have come
to Athens either to satisfy the religious needs of metics from Epidaurus
or as a result - however remote - of empire. Although because of its late
arrival we cannot relate the introduction of this cult specifically to the
plague, its appearance can only have been motivated by the need to cope
with disease in some form. Like the cult of Bendis, it had its first home in
Attica in the Piraeus where it was brought from Epidaurus (see above,
pp. 261—2). About its foundation there, however, less is known than
about its early history in Athens. We learn from a fourth-century
inscription ( IG n 2 4960) that in 420/19 a certain ‘Telemachus brought it
here on a chariot, coming inland from Zea at the time of the Great
Mysteries, and took it to the Eleusinium, having sent for [the sacred
image of] the snake from its home in accordance with the oracles.’ The
‘home’ can only be Epidaurus, the great centre of Asclepian worship in
the Peloponnese, and the mention of Zea as the point of departure for
Athens may mean no more than that it had landed there from Epidaurus

27 M-L 73 with Meiggs 1972 (e 53) 302—4.

28 For the history of her cult in Athens, seePeiirka 1966(0 15 5) 122—30; for its substance, Nilsson
1967 (K 69) 853-4.

29 Nilsson i960 (k 68) 55-80, esp. 67-9; Ferguson 1944 (d 25) 96-104, esp. 98.

30 1 G i 3 136 with Bingen 1959 (c 1 16) 31-44. According to a scholion to PI. Rep. 327a it was
celebrated on 19 Thargelion.

314 8 h. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

on its way to Athens. However, since there was an Asclepian sanctuary at
Zea which enjoyed a greater reputation in the early fourth century than
its counterpart at Athens, 31 it may well have been established shortly
before Telemachus brought the cult to Athens. 32 When the Kerykes
refused to accommodate the god in the Eleusinium, the tragedian
Sophocles, who was also a priest of the healing Hero Amynos, received
him in his house, pending the completion of the sanctuary on the south
slope of the Acropolis in 4 14/ 13. 33 Votive offerings indicate the popular-
ity of the cult in the late Roman period.

There must have been other imported cults that were accorded official
recognition by the state in the fifth century, even though no record of
them has been preserved. We may infer this from the resistance offered
by the guardians of the established forms of worship to the newcomers;
we encountered this phenomenon in the refusal of the Kerykes to give
Asclepius shelter in the Eleusinium, and it is reflected on a grand scale in
Euripides’ Bacchae, where the official recognition of the cult of Dionysus
in Thebes is the issue.

The state, however, could not inhibit the entrance of private cults into
Athens from abroad, especially from the east, and could not stamp them
out by refusing to recognize them. Some such cults as those of Adonis
and the Mother of the Gods will have been integrated into the religious
life of Athens well before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. But
the hardships of war, breeding as they do hopes for personal salvation,
will have engendered more private cults than memory has preserved. If
we are to draw inferences from the few of which we know, such as the
cult of Sabazios, a Phrygian divinity parallel to Dionysus, or the
mysteries of the Thracian goddess Cotyto, both of whom came to
Athens in the last third of the fifth century, 34 they found their devotees
primarily among women, slaves and members of the lower classes.
Probably they were imported by sailors and other transients milling
around the Piraeus, not by metics who brought their native forms of
worship with them.

III. THE VISUAL ARTS

The two literary versions of the oath alleged to have been sworn by the
Greeks before the battle of Plataea bound them not to rebuild any of the
sanctuaries burned down or laid waste by the Persians but to leave them

31 The Piraeus sanctuary must be the one in which Plutus is to be cured of his blindness in Ar.
Plut. 653-747, since it is close to the sea (656). For the sanctuary at Zea, see Kutsch 1913 (k 55) 25-6
and 36-7, and Wycherley 1978 (1 187) 265.

32 Possibly between 422 and 420, since in Ar. Wasps 1 22-3 (422 b.c.) Philocleon is sent for a cure
to the Asclepius sanctuary on Aegina.

33 IG u 2 4960, Etym. Magn., s.v. Aegiwv, Vita Sophoclis ii, with Kutsch 1913 (k 55) 16—28 and

Walton 1935 (j 106) 167-89, esp. 170-4. Cf. Wycherley 1978 (1 187) 181—2, and Beschi 1967-8(1 14)
381—436. 34 Nilsson 1967 (k 69) 835-6; Burkert 1985 (k 16) 178—9.

THE VISUAL ARTS 3 M

for future generations as a memorial of Persian impiety. 35 Regardless of
whether this part of the oath is authentic or not, it is true that the temples
of Attica were left in ruins for a whole generation. No attempt was made
to rebuild them until the 440s, when the Peace of Callias formally
terminated hostilities against Persia and when, upon the rejection by the
rest of the Greek world of an invitation to meet in Athens to deliberate
about the problem of restoring them, the Athenians at the instigation of
Pericles decided to embark on an ambitious programme of rebuilding
their own ruined shrines. 36 This, however, did not mean that the task of
reconstruction was not taken in hand sooner: there was nothing to
prevent the rebuilding of secular structures destroyed by the Persians
and nothing to inhibit the construction of new shrines to gods or heroes.
Foreign workmen are likely to have been employed in this enterprise
from its very inception, but the participation of foreign artists is not
attested until the 460s, when Cimon occupied the centre of the stage in
Athens.

Before we come to that, however, it will be convenient to discuss the
most extensive and most conspicuous renovation of this period. No
other part of Attica underwent more profound changes in character in
the wake of the Persian Wars than the Piraeus. Themistocles had
designated it to replace Phalerum as the main harbour of the city during
his archonship in 493/2, but its growth not only as a naval base but as a
crucial commercial centre of the Mediterranean had to await the end of
the Persian Wars and the establishment of Athenian hegemony among
the Greeks. To organize it in a manner befitting its new importance,
Hippodamus of Miletus, the most renowned town planner of antiquity,
was invited to design it (see above, p. 203). Our determination of when
the invitation was extended depends on the interpretation we give to the
phrase ‘about the time of confrontation with the Medes’ (Schol. Ar.
Knights 327), which may range from soon after the battle of Plataea in
479/8 to the Peace of Callias in 449; the fact that Hippodamus lived long
enough to plan the city of Rhodes in 408/7 (Str. xiv.2.9) makes the latter
the more likely date. According to the most detailed account of
Hippodamus’ activities which has come down to us (Arist. Pol. 11.8,
1 267b22-i268ai4), he was not only the inventor of the art of town
planning, but developed it on a theoretical basis that included well-
articulated views on the nature of the good society (or ‘best constitu-
tion’, as Aristotle calls it) and on certain mathematical principles. 37 This

35 Diod. xi. 29. 3; Lycurg. Lioc. 8i;cf. Isocr. tv Parteg. 155-6; Paus. x.35.2; Cic. Rep. 111.9. 15. The
clause docs not appear in the epi graphical version in Tod, GHl 11. 204.21-5 1. The genuineness of the
oath was disputed by Theopompus, FGrH 1 15 f 153; Siewert 1972 (F65) 102-6 believes this clause
to be a later insertion.

36 See ch. 8 c above.

37 Ar. Pol. n.8, 1 267b28 says that he wanted to be ‘an expert on all of nature’; Hsch. and Photius,
s.v. c / imo 8 a.fj.ov vefiTjois, call him a fj.€T€cupoX 6 yos-

3 1 6 Zh. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

theoretical penchant is reflected in his design of the Piraeus: he divided it
into different sectors according to function, providing each sector with a
rectilinear set of streets arranged in the grid pattern already known in his
native Asia Minor. Thus, certain areas were reserved for public use and
others for private, and different public areas were assigned different
functions: emporium, port, agora, etc., and provided with different
buildings: club-houses, gateway, etc. In short, he adapted his general
principles to the local conditions and functions of the Piraeus. 38

There are further ways in which Hippodamus left a mark on Athens.
We are told by a late commentator on Aristophanes’ Knights (schol. on
327) that he settled in the Piraeus and had a house there. Since foreigners
were barred from the acquisition of real estate, this may mean that he was
given Athenian citizenship, which is corroborated by the general belief
that he was the father of the Archeptolemus who was prominent in
Athenian politics as an advocate of peace with Sparta in the late 420s and
was condemned to death together with Antiphon as one of the leaders of
the Four Hundred in 41 1/10. 39 The father fared better than the son. His
participation in the settlement of Thurii in 444/3, along with other
luminaries such as Protagoras of Abdera and Herodotus of Halicarnas-
sus, suggests his active support of Periclean policies and may even
indicate membership in the Periclean brains-trust; it is virtually certain,
though not explicitly attested, that the planning of the colony was his
work. 40 His eccentric appearance, his long flowing hair, his taste for
expensive ornamentation worn with cheap but warm clothes, which
served him in both winter and summer (Ar. Pol. 11.8, i26yb2 5-8), may
have prefigured the attire affected by young Athenian aristocrats in the
420s.

Considering the intensity of the building activity in Athens after the
Persian Wars and especially after 450, it is astonishing how little we
know about the architects responsible for their design. Only a few names
have come down to us, in most cases without indication of their
provenance; only in the case of Metagenes of Xypete and Xenocles of
Cholargos, who finished the Telesterium at Eleusis, does the demotic
give us assurance that they were native Athenians. For the rest, no more
than the circumstantial evidence that only works in Attica are known to
have been their design suggests an Athenian origin. 41 But foreigners

38 See McCredie 1971 (1 99) 95-100.

39 Ar. Knights 794—5, cf. 327 with schol.; Lys. XII Eratosth. 67; [Plut.] X orat. 833F— 834A.

40 Hsch. s.v. Inno 8 dfj,ov vc/xijais; Schol. Ar. Knights 327; Diod. xn.10.7.

4! Only Ictinus is said to have also worked outside Attica, sc. on the temple of Apollo at Bassae:
see Paus. vin.41.9, where his work on the Parthenon is also mentioned; cf. also Plut. Per. 13.7 and
Str. ix. 1 2 and 16. He is also credited with beginning the design of the Telesterion at Eleusis (Str.
ix. 12; Vitr. vii praef. 16), which was continued by Coroebus (Plut. loc. cit. y cf. IG i 3 33, line 26).
Callicrates was an architect of the Parthenon, constructed the Long Walls connecting Athens with
the Piraeus (Plut. he. cit.), and designed the Nike temple on the Acropolis (IG i 3 3 5 with Meiggs 1972
(e 53) 496—503). To Mnesicles only the Propylaea are attributed (Plut. Per. 13.12; Harp. s.v.

THE VISUAL ARTS

317

were called in to help decorate the new buildings with paintings and
scu Iptures.

Our knowledge of them depends entirely on literary records which
have come down to us. 42 Practically no originals of their works have
survived, although we can occasionally catch a glimpse of them in the
case of painters in imitations on vase paintings, and in the case of
sculptors in Roman copies and on coins. The earliest foreign painter on a
monumental scale of whom we know is at once reputed to be the greatest
and most seminal. Polygnotus’ migration from his native Thasos to
Athens is almost certainly related to Cimon’s military successes in the
northern Aegean in the 470s and 460s, since it cannot be an accident that
his most important works in Athens were displayed in buildings closely
associated with Cimon’s exploits. The earliest of these is the shrine built
to house the bones of Theseus, which Cimon brought back from his
expedition against Scyros soon after 476/5. It was adorned with at least
three paintings, one of which, depicting Theseus’ visit to Poseidon and
Amphitrite on the sea-bed in order to convince Minos that he was
Poseidon’s son, was the work of the Athenian painter Micon, whose
work is often associated with that of Polygnotus. The artist of the other
two paintings, representing Theseus’ participation in the fight against
the Amazons and in the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, is not identified
by Pausanias (1.17.6), but recent research has persuasively established
that they are the work of Polygnotus. 43 Micon and Polygnotus also
collaborated on the sanctuary of the Dioscuri (Anaceum), which was
probably erected in the Cimonian period. Micon’s contribution showed
the voyage of the Argonauts to the land of the Colchians and Polygno-
tus’ marriage of the Dioscuri (Paus. 1. 18. 1). What connexion, if any, this
shrine may have had with Cimon’s achievements is not known. But
Polygnotus’ most celebrated work at Athens, Troy Taken , was painted
for a stoa built in Cimon’s honour by his brother-in-law Peisianax. By the
fourth century, the renown which Polygnotus’ art had given it caused its
name to be changed from ‘Peisianacteum’ to ‘Painted Stoa’ (Stoa
Poikile). 44 A close personal bond between Polygnotus and Cimon is
indicated by the report that unlike Micon, who painted the famous battle
of Marathon and an Amazonomachy for the Peisianacteum, Polygnotus
refused to accept pay for his work, in which, we are told, the Trojan
Laodice was given the features of Cimon’s sister Elpinice, who counted

FIpo7TvXaia raura). An unnamed Athenian architect is believed to have been responsible for the
temple of Hephaestus on the Agora, of Poseidon at Sunium, of Ares at Acharnae, and of Nemesis at
Rhamnous (see Dinsmoor 1950 (1 60) 179-82). But Miles 1981 (1 112) 207 now attributes
Hephaestus, Poseidon and Nemesis to three different architects.

42 Conveniently collected in Overbeck 1868 (1 120).

4i Barron 1972 (1 9) 20-45, who assigns to Polygnotus also a fourth picture in the Theseum,
representing Theseus’ return from the dead. For Polygnotus’ activity in the Theseum, see Harp s.v.
/ 7 oAvyva>To? as emended by Valcken. 44 D. L. vu.1.5; Suda s.v. fleiatavaKros aroa.

3 I 8 8 h. ATHENS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE

Polygnotus among her numerous lovers (Plut. Cim. 4.6.7). The reward
for this generosity was the grant of Athenian citizenship. But Polygno-
tus does not seem to have made much use of it: after Cimon’s death no
more is heard of his residence in Athens. 45 His work, however,
continued to exert a profound influence on several Athenian vase
painters. 46 His departure did not end the relations of his family with
Athens: a generation later his son or nephew Aglaophon was com-
missioned by Alcibiades to paint two pictures to celebrate his triumphs
at the great Games, one showing personifications of the Olympian and
Pythian Games crowning him, and the other a seated Nemea holding
him in her lap. 47

There was at least one other foreign painter whose employment
brought Alcibiades considerable notoriety. Alcibiades enticed Agathar-
chus of Samos to come into his house and then confined him in it, despite
his protests, until he had decorated it with his painting^. 48 Little else is
known of Agatharchus’ work, except that he is said to haVe been the first
to paint scenery for the (presumably posthumous) performance of
Aeschylean tragedy, and to have written a book on the subject which
stimulated Anaxagoras and Democritus to formulate theories on
perspective (Vitr. vu.praef. 11).

The context of an anecdote related by Plutarch (Per. 13.7) suggests
that Agatharchus also participated in the Periclean building programme
and that he was a fast and facile worker. He was criticized on that score
by his contemporary Zeuxis, who had come to Athens as a young man
from Heraclea (probably the one on the Siris in southern Italy) in the
430s (PI. Prt. 3